one for the money, two for the show..

it may be too early to know for sure, but it looks like as though my shiny macintosh has given up the ghost. i bought it just over a year ago and i am now thanking my common sense husband for suggesting the extended care plan. it would have been a bitch to have the thing kick it less than a month out of warranty. other than the minor inconvenience of not getting to use something shiny, it isn't much of a big deal. i still have my old laptop, and we backup our computers daily to an external hard drive. having a computer geek for a husband has it's benefits, heck he is out there trying to fix it right now, you never know, maybe it is time for another christmas miracle?


what i really wanted to talk about though was potty training. i know that there are a few moms that read the blog with kids around the same age as cohen, so tell me...are you thinking about? finished? working on it? thinking about thinking about it?

back in january when silvija was here we were working on it. i knew it was too soon for him to really understand the concept, and he was nowhere near communicative enough to tell us he had to go, but we thought we would just get him used to the idea of a potty. he started sitting on it everyday, often with fantastic results (if you call that kind of thing fantastic), but then silvija went home, and ada was born, and slowly potty training fell by the wayside. i did buy this book, and i even started reading it (although i forget what i read now), but instinctually i felt that he wasn't ready to actually make a go of it.

i never did write about it here, but in april, shortly after ada was born, cohen came down with a strange illness, so strange that my doctor couldn't diagnose him and sent us to a pediatrician. he didn't know what it was either and sent us to the hospital for a bunch of tests. i mention it now because one of the tests was a urine sample. the lab technician handed me a cup in a very nonchalant manor and pointed to the bathroom, i paused before asking her what it was for? she then told me that she needed the urine, from cohen, in a cup, on command?? when i explained that such a thing was not possible she looked at me with scorn and judgement. i was dumbfounded, so much so that i felt i needed to explain that he was not even two yet. she didn't seem to see that as a barrier. finally she sighed and handed me a urine bag to take home in hopes of getting a collection. i couldn't help but think, seriously? less than two? i understand that some kids are trained by then (although i highly doubt they are trained to go on command in a strange bathroom at the hospital right after having a bunch of blood drawn), but surely it is more the exception than the norm?

it was about a month ago that i finally revisited the idea. he says potty, pee, and poo now, and i know he understands when he is going, plus, his diaper is usually dry when he wakes up, all good signs right? what i didn't take into account is the mentality of a two year old.

i met a woman at the park one day whose 18 month old was almost trained. i asked her what her secret was and she said that since the weather had gotten nice,she simply allowed her daughter to be naked all the time and she just figured it out. sounds easy, i thought, let's get on that. yeah right. thank goodness i bought the giant package of paper towels on our last visit to costco. i can see now that i should have asked more questions. questions like, did you make her sit on a potty a bunch of times as well? how many? were there rewards? cause the thing is, cohen thinks it's great to be naked, and he knows when he is going to go because he hides or goes into another room, he'll even come out after and say "uh oh!" and take me to show me where he went, but transferring this information to a vessel is tricky. initially we had a stand alone potty that we were using, but i started to sense his interest in the big potty, so we got him his own seat. he sits on it now and i sit with him. mostly he reads marko's train magazine and shouts "all aboard, choo choo!", or "engine!", or "caboose", and then tries to unravel the entire roll of toilet paper and shove it in the toilet. he very rarely actually goes to the bathroom, and even when he does i swear he is disappointed that he couldn't hold it longer. what he does do is flush the toilet shoved full of paper, wave at the bowl while shouting "bye bye!" and then proceed to another room where he immediately pees on the floor. this is how it happens everytime. i am pretty sure it isn't a coincidence.

laisa told me about the m&m's (or was it smarties) as a treat, and so i tried that. the method was one for sitting, two for a pee, and three for a poo. apparently it works like a charm for others. cohen figured it out right away though, sit for a bit and get an m&m, get up and then come sit back down and expect another m&m, no m&m? throw hissy fit. hissy fit means no relaxing, which means no actual productive potty usage, and no belief that when he sits he gets an m&m. plus i am not really sure about the whole chocolate as bribery thing, i mean i have to save something for when he gets older and i really need it, no?

so we will continue sitting, and i will continue to buy gigantic bags of paper towel and toilet paper, and one day it will hopefully all come together. the one thing i know for sure is that i don't want to push it, if he isn't ready, he isn't ready. still, if you have any advice, or have been given advice you plan to use, i am all ears.