Daily Life

I’m continuing my story from yesterday’s post about our family’s journey into redecorating the bedrooms.  Keep reading if you want to know whether or not my son has skulls on his walls and whether or not my daughter stuck with purple.

We started our project with the upstairs room, as it’s the largest but had the fewest pieces of furniture to move.  It only took a couple of days to paint, no wallpaper to scrape.  The thing that was most frustrating about the painting was all the crazy angles.  Because it’s up by the roof, there were lots of tight spaces and awkward spots where the walls and ceiling meet.  I made the mistake of painting in a tight spot in such a way that I backed into the freshly primed wall, thus priming the back of my pants.  I will be eternally grateful to my sister-in-law for putting up with me and helping me out with all the painting.

Moving the furniture upstairs was an ordeal.  We had to move a queen-size bed up the narrow, curved stairs.  Even with three of us, we barely made it, only to realize that the box spring wasn’t going to go up at all.  The bad news is that we had to get rid of the box spring, both because it wouldn’t fit and because we discovered that it was broken.  The good news is, we got a fantastic new bed frame that doesn’t need the separate spring and folds up.  We also gained several inches of space under the bed.  My husband ordered it on a Sunday night, it arrived Tuesday morning.

With that out of the way, it was time to get to the kids rooms. It only took a week to finish both rooms.  With a little help from some friends, who kindly loaned me their children to babysit, I had plenty of time to scrape wall border, wash walls, prime, and paint.

I’m sure you’ve been wondering, to the point of losing sleep, whether or not my son got his skulls.  When he first proposed it, we nixed the black.  It’s too hard to paint over.  We told him he could have midnight blue, and still do the skulls.  In the end, though, he decided on Smurf blue and an ocean theme.  Not that I have anything against skulls, but I have to admit, I was relieved.

Sarah changed her mind as well.  When confronted with all those lovely colors, she settled on the most vivid green she could find.  I was nervous at first, but the color actually looks wonderful on her walls.  She said she wanted it to look like a meadow.  I had given her my old bedspreads, the ones my mother made for me.  One is golden and furry, like a lion; the other has appliqued baby dragons.  She wanted the walls to be like grass for her jungle and fantasy animals.  Sadly, the paint peeled a bit in Sarah’s room because the previous owner had used an oil-based paint.  But we made do, touched up the walls a bit, and were good to go.

I’m relieved this project is over.  It’s nice to have the kids all moved in.  I would say that I’ll never do this again, but I don’t want to jinx myself.  After all, we still have the kitchen and the basement to do.

I’ve got potty training on the brain these days.  This is in part because I’ve been able to do the “No More Diapers” dance in my own house.  My daughter’s been fully potty trained for about 3 weeks now.  Many of my friends, both in cyberspace and in real life, have kids who are potty training.

Which brings me to the title of my post.  I really prefer the term “potty learning.”  I took it from an excellent book by William and Martha Sears called You Can Go to the Potty.  The book is aimed at children, but there are excellent tips for parents.  As I mentioned, I prefer “potty learning” to “potty training.”  Our children are not pets who need to be housebroken.  They are young people who need to learn how to do things.

I know there are people who will be horrified to learn that my son was nearly 4 when he learned and my daughter is 3 and a half (that half is very important to her).  Nowadays, I see so many parents anxious to get their under 2’s to use the toilet.  If you can do it easily, then more power to you.  But I very sincerely doubt that most kids that age are ready.

With both of my kids, it took less than 2 days for them to be able to consistently use the toilet during the day.  (My son still isn’tdry at night, but this is very common, especially in boys.  But that is a post for another time).  I didn’t have to bribe my kids with toys, candy, stickers, money(!), or other prizes for going to the bathroom.  We haven’t had weeks or months of working on it, only to have them regress.  In fact, I didn’t “train” them at all–they figured it out all by themselves, for the most part.

When I mentioned this to the pediatrician, he was pleased that we had chosen this gentle method.  He said that children should not be coerced or pressured and that most children are not ready before age 3 or 3 and a half.  This was the same thing my daughter’s occupational therapist had said.  And in my own experience, the parents who have had the most success have waited until their children are a bit older.

Like with other things, I prefer the low-stress method of parenting.  I also chose not to “sleep train” either of my children.  I found listening to them cry stressful, so I used other methods of getting them to sleep.  I don’t know whether the now sleep better than their peers, but I do know that bedtime has always been pleasant and calm in our house.  (I should write about this sometime, too.)

In the end, my recommendation for parents is that if potty learning is not going well, your child seems uninterested, you constantly find yourself offering rewards, your child seems to do well and then regresses, or you and your child are frustrated, then back off for a time.  Give it awhile, then revisit.  It doesn’t have to make you crazy.

My son has a new hobby.  He likes to make signs.  For absolutely everything.  It started one night after dinner.  He was in the bathroom and my daughter kept trying to go in with him.  This was bothering him, especially when she ignored his repeated requests for privacy.  When he came out, he decided that we needed a sign for the bathroom:

(The extra drawing is my daughter’s artwork.)

Next thing I knew, he was making signs and hanging them up all over the house.  We have the “ghosts” in the kitchen doorway, the “cool tool” sign in the kitchen, the “in” and “out” signs by the front door and on the porch.

Speaking of ghosts, apparently we have a “nice” haunted house.  My son made a new sign for the bathroom:

As a result of the original “PRIVIT” sign in the bathroom, my daughter became quite distressed.  She wanted to be able to join her brother in the bathroom.  Being the sensitive boy that he is, he didn’t like seeing her so upset.  So he decided to remove the original sign.  I suppose he figured it might not be enough just to take the sign down.  After all, he hadn’t informed his sister of the change in the rules.  So he produced yet another sign:

There is peace in the land at last.

Well, it’s official:  My 5-year-old is no longer a little boy.  We went to visit my husband at work this afternoon, after he was done teaching for the day.  His student teacher was also there, surfing YouTube.  He found a pretty cool video and was showing it to my son.  He wanted to see it again, but we had to leave.  I told him we could find it again at home.  We did, and he enjoyed watching it.  I went to the kitchen to get some chores done.  When I checked in with my son, he was doing his own surfing–finding all sorts of neat videos to watch.  Of course, I immediately had mom radar going, to make sure he wasn’t stumbling on something inappropriate.  But he was able to find all kinds of kid stuff, from Hot Wheels cars to Thomas the Tank Engine to marble chutes.

When did my baby get to be old enough to surf the web on his own?!