It Began with a BBFT

I wrote this about 2 months ago--don't want to put more shame on jack than is due
:)


I hate to speak too soon--I'm trying not to make eye contact with the situation as I'm afraid some backsliding will occur--but Jack has been wearing underwear and using the potty for 3 days now! I was fairly certain we were going to have to retract our preschool sign up or just fake it every day and pack a change of clothes. I thought he would never do it! He is over 3 and a half and is just now showing interest despite my daily hint dropping, suggestions and public shaming basically ("See Jack, he goes to the potty and he is only two and a half").

I guess it came as a surprise that Jack would take as long as he has. Ben potty trained himself after being let loose in the back yard naked and realizing he could pee on trees--much to my chagrin as I wanted to stick with easy diapers for a bit longer as I was juggling 4 kids, one of them a newborn. Also Ben couldn't even say the word potty (or many other words really) so the fact that he was silent yet using the potty like a rock star at 2.5 was shocking to me. So I assumed Jack would follow suit as he was verbal early on and somehow learned colors, shapes and some letters behind my back.

Nope.

He has been perfectly content to just wallow in his diapers and all that they contain regardless of the stench. Nearly every morning we have a little talk about big boys and little boys and he confidently reported he was a  little boy and wanted to wear diapers. No potty on the horizon for him. I tried dangling all sorts of proverbial carrots--toys, treats, trips to target for new undies (in lieu of nap even), preschool, Disney World----he would not be budged.

One day this spring I decided just to put him in underwear--thought maybe I wasn't being pushy enough. I mean he was a solid 3.5 years of age. So at 8 am the undies went on. By 8:30 he had accident #1. By 9am accident #2 and by 10 am accident #3 and we were back in diapers.

I decided to continue with the daily potty chats, casually left some potty library books in his bed and around the house, called for him to watch Ben pee whenever possible, left him pantless in the backyard quite a bit and still no interest. When I'd sit him on the potty he would gladly sit but then say "My tummy says it's all gone!" or he would insist he just doesn't pee in general.

Giant boxes of pampers from amazon continued to appear on my front porch. I had to buy swim diapers for this summer (I threw mine out last summer assuming we would for sure be done by this summer!).

And then we went to Target and I showed him the array of underwear available to him if he would just use the potty. Thomas, super heroes, minions, paw patrol, you name it. I was doing my best Vanna White in the underwear aisle to entice my novice potty boy. So he settled on some paw patrol undies (don't think he has ever seen it in his life) and he was promised full use of them if he just started to use the potty. Later that day he had a dry diaper, he sat on the potty and I helped it along a bit by dousing his nethers with warm water and lo and behold he actually peed! The rest has been downhill from there (mostly, other than a surprise poop when I think he forgot he was wearing underwear) and now he is resistant even to pull ups at night.

Other than the long wait potty training #4 has been surprisingly easy as I have outsourced all the training to his sibs. Whenever Jack senses the urge to go he just starts frantically hollering about it and the nearest sibling yanks down shorts and undies and plops him up on the toilet and they even know to point the general down to avoid a shower. Who knew they could be so helpful?

It's pretty hilarious to watch. Today was his first successful #2 and they were all clustered around him as he sat perched on the potty--all 3 of them shouting encouragement and advice on how to accomplish the task. Jack, in true male fashion, took his time. The girls quickly lost interest but Ben stayed with him out of solidarity--reading him books and just chatting it up. 10 minutes later Ben cam bursting out of the bathroom beaming, thrust his arms to the sky in his best touchdown pose and yelled "Jackie pooped!" Hallelujah.

He was promised a toy for successful #2s and luckily I got a bag of Thomas trains at a garage sale just last week that I intended to use for his birthday but this was much more pressing. So he was rewarded for his efforts with a crane and a little caboose. He pooped again this evening (after one false alarm) and earned a yellow train named stephen and a flatbed car. So he is building his Thomas the train set one poop at a time.

So, it's official. The Battles Family is diaper free. I've been giving away pampers as party favors whenever anyone with a toddler comes near our house. The UPS guy is probably in withdrawal from his monthly diaper deliveries to our house. It is yet another big big stage behind us. It was a long time coming though. Jack sure did drag it out . . . stay tuned for the move out of the crib as you'll see there is a theme here.

Jack turned three this past Thanksgiving and it was a traumatic day for me AND him. Mainly for me.

Why? Well he is our baby. There shall be no more Baby Battles--not any sired by Ryan Battles anyhow--medical science has taken care of that--and the leap to age 3 is truly the leap out of infancy/toddlerhood. He's like a preschooler--with opinions and sentences--and somehow he even learned colors and numbers! Anyhow,  when we made the decision to take measures to 'be done' it made a lot of sense. a whole lot. I mean, when Jack was born the twins had just turned 4, Ben was 22 months and was not talking at all so essentially was like parenting a super-cute, human looking chimpanzee. So needless to say it was a challenging time. I'm not complaining at all and we made the choice to have our kids close together which I wouldn't change even if we had a do-over, but at the time we sent Ryan off to the doctor to put some finality to our fertility (which screams irony b/c we paid a lot of money TO fertility peeps to have these kids so now we're paying to stop it??) we felt like a 5th might just break us.

Fast forward to November, 2015 and now everyone is sleeping great. Naps while nice are not essential and can be skipped for more exciting things. The kids can actually be helpful and in general we are emerging from the toddler fog-- and I now have baby fever.

I think it's normal though, right? and would happen regardless of the size of our brood-- if we had 15 kids that once that 15th one turned 3 and it hit me that we were done with babies and the like I'd have a period of mourning. As I have said before I don't do well with change--even positive change--so I think this emotional hiccup is normal and unavoidable regardless of our brood size and is not cause to march in for a vasectomy reversal. Ryan wholeheartedly agrees (for multiple obvious reasons) and has been talking me off of the ledge these last few weeks and so far the vasectomy has stayed intact.

Just to capture a little of my maternal emotionionalism (not a real word I know but I like it) about the graduation out of the baby stage let me describe Jack's  'Farewell to the Pacifiers'. The twins ditched their pacifiers by age 3 (on the advice of our dentist so as not to have paci shaped dentition forever) which I of course documented but handled better than this one (Ben never liked them so I only got to practice this once).

Ryan was fine of course and we had been talking up the 'paci's going bye-bye' thing for a bit with Jack so I thought he'd be fine. The girls were great with it so I was hopeful. Jack actually did pretty well tossing them out but then when the light went out and he was snuggling up in his crib (yes, he still is in a crib and I'm not letting it go for quite some time--he's contained and he loves it. the child still takes a 2-3 hour nap every day!) he started to cry. A very sad forlorn cry--at least to my ears. It probably was the same cry he does when I say no to a second cookie or no to more snacks but because I was primed to be sad about this transition to me it was a grief stricken-pierce-your-mothers-heart kind of cry. So I tip-toed into the darkness and looked down at him in mourning over his pacifiers and of course I started crying and there we are both crying in the dark and it was just a big mess. I swear I was never this emotional until I had these kids. I so wanted to hand him back his little pacifiers and so he could stuff one in his face and roll the rest around in his little hands. In the end I stayed strong mainly thanks to Ryan  (he tested me straightaway by coming into our room shortly after the tearful scene and saying, "He seems pretty sad, think we should give them to him?" to which I replied "Yes! Yes! I'll get them!" and then he hollered "NO! that was a test and you failed!!--c'mon Battles, stay strong!") but every day for some time I said to Ryan 'I don't care! If he cries again, I'm giving them back!" to which he would give me a parenting pep talk and ultimately I'd toughen up. I still have a baggie of them stashed away just in case Jack backslides and needs a pacifier bender.

And so as we are all aware time marches on ( I think I say this phrase in every post) -- my baby turned three, ditched his pacifiers and we both survived. His teeth are no longer paci shaped (sniff) and I even signed him up for preschool in the fall (pending potty training--Ryan swears I'm giving Jack a pill to thwart his potty training to keep him in diapers).  I still have some things I'm not ready to let go of yet--such as the aforementioned crib and I'm pretty sure I'll be carrying him around at his 16th birthday--I just can't resist! (classic example- last week He said "mama hold me please?" and I said "No, you're too big, I'll hold your hand" and then he said "But Mama, I love when I hold you!" so I of course swooped him up and schlepped him around on my hip the rest of the morning). I'm looking forward to what this next stage brings--hopefully less screaming in general.

So, happy third birthday Jack! We love you and are thankful God gave you to us!


















Saying goodbye to the pacifiers