Potty training already? I guess not!

Well, the excited, first-time parent-like optimism that I have been feeling about Nathan's potty training potential has drained away. I was so hopeful. If you have three kids, shouldn't at least ONE of them be easy? Come on, what are the statistics anyway? All I ever hear about are stories of people that have 2 year olds that love the potty and just do it because they want to, often without much encouragement from parents. Here I'm thinking, Nathan's easy going, looks up to his big sister . . . he's going to be The One for me! So on Tuesday, on a bit of a whim, I decided to give it a go.

First day, you don't have super high expectations so when he had a lot of accidents, I didn't stress about it too much. He did have two pees on the potty, so that has to mean something, right?? Day 2 (yesterday) the success level didn't exactly go up . . . he actually started resisting more. He would be sitting on the potty for a long time, refuse to pee, and then I'd let him get up and he'd have an accident a few minutes later. At this point I'm still not frustrated, I'm thinking it's just a learning curve and he doesn't have it yet. It took the first really messy poop in his shorts for me to feel those all-too-familiar feelings of frustration and anger boiling up inside of me. I found myself raising my voice at this little two year old sitting on his little potty after it was too late (but I still make him sit), and he's repeating back to me, "I need to put my poop in the potty, pee-pee goes in the potty", and it was then that I realized that I couldn't do this to him. I went for a run last night to clear my head and try and figure out why I am SO bad at potty training, and I'm sure there are many reasons for that, but the reality is I can't continue. I PROMISED myself when I went down this road with Lynsey that I wouldn't do it again, and here I am 4 years later! Adam was so different because we waited so long and my expectations for him were so different, it took him a while to "get it" but I didn't really get too frustrated at the whole situation. It's when I have this little communicator in front of me that knows what to do, and has shown many signs of being physically ready, that brings up this part of me that I don't want to see. The final nail was this morning when he woke up, I tried to sit him on the potty and he just cried and said he didn't want to and didn't want to . . . you just have to know when to quit sometimes!

So today we are back in diapers and we'll give this another go in September, after all our travel over the summer is complete! Instead of being mad about what he's NOT doing, I am going to focus on what a sweet little guy he is! How he is working hard on his manners (seriously, can you ever get enough of, "Oh thank you, Mommy" and "Oh sorry, Mommy" or even "'Scuse me, Mommy"??). He goes with the flow on so many things, and has to put up with much from his big brother (Adam pushed him down the stairs the other day, very upsetting on many levels for all of us!). He is loving wearing Lynsey's princess shoes, and is getting amazingly good at walking in them! Life is too short! Buying another few boxes of diapers isn't the end of the world:).

As you can see from the pictures, we had a little mini campout in our yard on Memorial Day weekend! It was just one night, and the kids were very excited about it. Nathan didn't do so well, Brian ended up taking him inside during the night, but the other two did great! I think we'll probably try it a few more times over the summer before the big one in August in the mountains. Just this week, we also booked our flights home for Christmas, yay! Happy we'll be able to give our kids family Christmases in both Edmonton and La Crete.

We are going to put Nathan in Adam's toddler bed soon, probably this weekend! I am sad to give up the crib just because I am afraid of what will happen to Nathan's sleeping (especially naps, sniff sniff!) but it is time. He isn't comfortable in his playpen anymore we have discovered, so we need to train him to sleep in a bed before all our traveling this summer. We just have to go out and buy Adam a twin mattress! He has been too big for that little bed for a while, but it's amazing what you put off when it's not a dire emergency!