Since Oogie (no. 3) was born 19 short months after Puppe (no.2) who was 21 short months after Boo (no.1) I have often been heard to remark that three is SO much more than just two plus one. I have been a mother now for going on 10 years if you take it cumulatively, but I never cease to be amazed at all the fantastic moments each child has, and I hope I never do.
Now Oogie, being the third child, ran at eleven months and walked at twelve. I’m really not kidding! It seemed that the day we brought her home she was already focusing on what her big sisters were doing and she decided, “Yup, that’s going to be me, and sooner rather than later, so shape up mom!” And it really has been that way with her. She took to solids like a star, bubbling her way through copious amounts of bright orange purity, but always reaching for whatever her sisters had on their plates. Her pencil grip (and she is already clearly left handed) is as good as her older sisters and at 23 months she tells us what she wants, and heaven help us if we don’t just jump to it.
This pint sized princess is the boss of the household and boy does she know it.
So, she potty trained quite early (I thought), and with no intervention from us. One day she literally said wee wee and got onto the potty. That was that, no more wee nappies and I thought, woo hoo, the end of nappies is in sight! One smallsnag though..
She would not poo in the potty or toilet. If it was a number two she would come up to me, Smoo, or whoever was closest and say, “Put my nappy on, need to make a poo!” At first I thought it was cute, and tried to encourage her to do it in the potty, but all of my Magda channeling (Bridgit Jones -” In the potty, in the potty!”) didn’t make the slightest difference. In fact, it lead to tantrums, snot, and screaming (that was just me) and I began to become concerned, what if this is a major problem, echoes of Freud’s theories started bouncing round my head, could this be an indication of problems to come? Bribery, star charts, even chocolate were offered but nope, no poo in the potty.
Frantic, I turned to my favorite resource, GOOGLE, honestly, what did we do before this gift of the modern age to mothers? I vaguely remember my dad looking things up in our old World Book encyclopedias, but Google is my fail safe!
Thankfully, mommy bloggers are, as a breed, open and honest and I soon discovered I am not the only one with poo issues. Freud smoid!
The advice I found was not to force the issue, but let her come to it naturally. She had mastered one aspect of the calls of nature, she’s a smart kid, she’ll get there.
So, we carried on buying nappies and when she asked for one checked briefly that she didn’t was to try the potty, but really left the decision up to her.
This evening, after dinner I settled the girls to watch a Saturday night Barbie movie treat and was catching up on some blog reading when Oogie came through:
“Put nappy on mamma, need to make a poo”
“Ok baby, but don’t you want to try the potty?”
“OK mamma”
And off she went to the potty, sat down…and did it!
Yup, houston, we have lift off! Well, I don’t think the Beatles ever had praise and adulation like she did. The big girls even left their movie and ran into the lounge shouting, “Yay Oogie, you are such a big girl” they high-fived her and insisted on hugs, and I even heard Boo say, “I’m so proud of you Oogie”
The smile on her face was priceless, she knew what she had done and that this was a big moment, and boy, did she milk it, running around the lounge shaking her bum bum and singing “poo in potty, yay!”
What a moment, what a girl and there was more to come. She fell asleep on the couch and woke after an hour, “need to wee wee mamma”, climbed off the couch, pulled down the pull ups and saw that man about that dog! Could it be that in one night we may have not only been able to eliminate the poo nappy but the night night nappy too? Keep your fingers crossed for us!
P.S – lots of poo talk here, some things only a parent can get excited about!
Confessions of an imperfect mom of 3's Blog 