typealice

Packing goes so much better with lots of wine. But the fruit flies agree.

The state of my house right now:

We’ve piled all of the boxes in one room, hoping tomorrow I can clean the rest of the house and have very little cleaning to do come moving day (Thursday) at the old house and will be able to focus the cleaning on the new house (!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I have to work that evening (and for the next two days), so it will be a rush job regardless.

My kitchen has gone by the wayside. I have only missed dishes one day, and it’s a disaster. My mother’s coming up to take care of Ash tomorrow so that I can spend most of my time and energy on cleaning up (thanks, Mom!).

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Thank you to all those blog readers who bought a purse in the past week. You’ve been amazing. I marked my entire collection of bags in half and got lots of purchases, so that means one less box to pack and I’ve got my work cut out for me once we get established in our new place. Only a couple left, if you’re interested…

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Wish us luck! We’re hoping this new place will be the last move for the next few years!

Dear Ash,
You’re 23-months old today and officially a “big boy,” or so you say. If anyone dares call you a “little boy” or a “baby” you will quickly correct us, that NO, you are a BIG BOY. Okay, okay, Big Boy, I apologize!

This month has been fun! We’ve spent a LOT of time outside, weekends as a family at the beach, Saturdays at the playground and/or lake with your dad, riding your tricycle around the neighbourhood, playing in the backyard while we barbque, you name it, we’ve really been enjoying the outdoors as summer has finally hit. You love the beach, going up to your waist in the water and playing with the sand. You’re not a fan of actually swimming, even though we’ve exposed you to lots of pools in your life, but it’ll come. Your dad and I are both water babies, so it’ll come. I’m not pressuring you.

You’re completely potty trained now, at home, as long as you don’t have a diaper (or any other bottoms) on. This is huge! You will go to the potty by yourself if you feel the need to- you’ll just tell me, “no peeing on the floor” or “need to poop” or sometimes I’ll hear you from the other room that “Ash is peeing on the green potty!” and I won’t need to help you or anything, you’ll just come back to me and say, “all done” or “peed on the potty!” If you’re bottomless, there’s never, ever an accident. It’s fantastic and I’m so proud of you. You’ve even started really asking for the potty at school, rather than just going in your diaper, and your teachers are also proud of you (and thrilled, I imagine, that they don’t have as many poopy diapers to clean up).

You started to love to “sing” this month, even if there’s no tune to go along with your songs- you like to sing Baa Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and your ABCs especially. You’re great with remembering most of the words, in order, and the same goes with the alphabet. Sometimes you get mixed up and even stick some numbers and random sounds in there, but often times you get it almost 100% correct!

Something fantastic happened this month that really was straight out of left field and completely caught me off guard: you started being able to fall asleep without me being there. One night, after nursing you as usual, you didn’t fall asleep and I didn’t want to lay in the dark with you for any longer, so I told you I was going to leave and that it was time to go to sleep and I’d see you soon. I kissed you on the forehead and left the room. And you didn’t complain. Not a peep. And a few minutes later I went in and there you were, asleep.

So we tried it the next night. I nursed you like usual, said goodnight and then got up to leave. You asked for another cuddle, but I said it was time to go to sleep and then I left the room. No complaining again, and you fell asleep on your own! We’ve done it this way most nights (Friday and Saturday nights are the hardest, after a week of not seeing me as much as you’d like, you’re pretty clingy and want lots and lots and lots of cuddles) for the past two weeks, and it’s fantastic. Not only is it great to see you break the habit of needing a boob in your mouth to go to sleep (giving me hope for whenever you want to stop nursing), but it’s nice to see you be a bit more independent at nighttime and it allows me a bit more time alone in the evenings too.

That’s not all, on the sleep front… there was one day, mid-way through this month, that you only had a 30-minute nap and asked to go to bed (“milk, in bed”) early- around 6:30pm, and much to my surprise, you SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT. I came to bed at 11ish, and nursed you in your sleep (seeing as I’m addicted to that hormonal rush that nursing gives me, otherwise I can’t fall asleep), and I woke up with a jolt at 5am, made sure you were still breathing and then I fell back to sleep. I woke up at 7:11, with you half on your mattress and half on ours, and you were STILL SLEEPING. I had to wake you up! It hasn’t happened since, but by god, it was amazing.

You’ve been nursing less at night recently, only once at 11 (that’s my choosing), and usually only once around 4:30 or 5am. You actually had me in a bit of a panic there for about a week, thinking you were losing interest- you don’t nurse during the day and because you don’t need me to fall asleep anymore and cut down dramatically on your nursing at night, I thought you might be done nursing all together soon… but then you changed it up again and are as interested as ever. My goal is two years, as it always has been, and as long as we make it to your second birthday, I’ll be happy.

Your sentences are becoming more complete, you started speaking in the first person instead of the third and you talk ALL THE TIME. ALLLLLLLLLL THEEEEEEEEEE TIIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEE. It makes me realize how much you actually see, how much you can remember, how much of a complete and utter SPONGE your brain is. It’s absolutely fascinating to watch. I love seeing you learn. I love being surprised that you remembered a word we taught you weeks ago and haven’t used since- having it pop up in normal conversation, as if we’ve been practicing it- it’s amazing.

We bought you a tricycle a couple of months ago, and you’ve finally gotten enough strength in your legs to ride it. When you first got it, you’d push it with your feet on the ground, but now you can ride like you’re supposed to. You go around the house every day, you ride it to the playground and to visit me at work. You’re growing up! Soon it will be time for a real bicycle with training wheels.

This may be later than some kids, but this month your imagination has started to explode. Though you’ve played with cars on the couch and trains on their tracks, you’ve never really acted out and verbalized imaginative things until this month. I’m sure that when you drive your cars on the couch that you’re enacting some kind of story in your mind, but we don’t hear car noises or anything coming from you… but this month when we’ve been reading the same books we’ve read for your entire life, you’ve suddenly started “eating” the food in the Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar, or “throwing” the balls in the pictures, or “flying” the airplanes that you see. I can’t wait to see this part of you flourish, as I’m sure it will.

This has been a fantastic month. We’ve had a lot of fun together, sometimes just you and I, sometimes just you and your dad, and sometimes the three of us as a family.

I know I say this every month, but I can’t help it: You’re one incredibly special person, one who makes my eyes water just at the thought of how much I love you. I love writing these monthly newsletters because it makes me realize how far you’ve come in such a short period of time. I’m glad I’ve documented it all, mostly because it makes me realize how quickly you change and it really makes me appreciate you who are NOW, since I know by next week you’ll be a slightly different version than you were today. You’re so smart and so special and I feel so lucky to be your mom. Thank you for showing me what real love feels like.

Love,
Mama

I talk about cloth diapers every single day of my life and it never gets boring.

There hasn’t been a single day of Ash’s life where I’ve wished that I didn’t cloth diaper. I’ve never felt that putting in a load of wash every night was too much work, and even though I hate poopy diapers, I still don’t hate them enough to use disposables (that is, if I used them incorrectly like 99% of people do- that is, not dumping the poop out of them and into the toilet before throwing them in the trash).

When people come into the store I work at and want to know about cloth diapers, I give about a 15 minute speal on what their options are (prefolds, fitteds, pockets and all-in-ones), and even though I often try not to be biased, customers will often NEED some kind of bias in order to make a decision. There’s a lot of information to think about- whether or not you want to save the most amount of money, or if you want the most natural fibers, or whether you want the convenience of disposibles in a cloth version… people often want to know what I use at home (answer: Fuzzi Bunz and BumGenius and most recently AMP Duo Diapers) and I give them the facts about how I like my one size, but it won’t fit from the beginning, my Fuzzi Bunz will last me through another kid no question, and that my new favorite is the AMP diaper… most people end up going with AMP on that recommendation.

Here’s the truth: I couldn’t care less what brand name you choose, all I care about is that you’re going to use them- and this isn’t from a salesperson’s point of view- I get paid whether or not you buy from us- it’s from a caring, fellow parent who knows the benefits of cloth diapering.

You’re avoiding wrapping your baby in bleached paper, plastic and disgusting CHEMICALS for literally 24 hours/day of their life for at least the first two years. You’re able to stop so much waste from going into landfills that it’s literally incomprehensible to most of us (which means that because we can’t visualize it, it ends up not really meaning much to us- do you really get what “10,000 tons of disposable diapers are tossed into landfills every day” means?).You’re able to avoid higher asthma and male infertility statistics. Cloth diapered babies rarely have diaper rash! Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, using disposables just doesn’t make sense to me.

By using cloth, you’re saving anywhere between two and three THOUSAND dollars for the first three years of your child’s life… that’s an incredible number. When I was pregnant I bought about $400 worth of cloth diapers and I haven’t had to buy any since. That’s basically been it for our diapering cost, over the past two years. It doesn’t make sense to me NOT to cloth diaper.

We’re approaching Ash’s second birthday here in about six weeks and it’s exciting for many reasons, but it also will mark one of my biggest personal achievements: I’ll be meeting my nursing goal.

Before Ash was born, I was “surrounded” by inspirational internet mamas (most influential was the lovely Ashley), most of which believed that cloth diapering, cosleeping, extended breastfeeding and babywearing was the way to go. As a childless person, I had no idea how I felt about any of those things, if I’d even heard of them before, but it wasn’t hard to win me over to that side of things.

More than the mamas, more than the books and websites I read, I followed my gut instinct, and still do, when it comes to parenting. I always say that I try to parent as PRIMAL as possible, and once that’s been decided, everything else comes with ease.

Anyway, one thing I’ve always known is that I was going to breastfeed. My mother breastfed me, my brother and sister all for nearly two years each, and so I knew I had a built-in support system (my mother was the one who I asked advice from for the very first latch in the delivery room), and a good role model. As soon as I learned that the both the World Health Organization (WHO), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) and others recommend to nurse for at LEAST the first six months (preferably to two years and beyond), I knew that I’d do it for that long.

A lot of new mothers set short-term goals for themselves, get past the first week, three weeks, six weeks, three months, six months etc, but I skipped those goals entirely and have always been set on two years. Minimum.

Now that we’re approaching that date, I can confidently say that we’ll make it, but I have to admit that Ash IS losing interest. We’re nursing less at night now (usually now just at 11pm, 3am and 6am- it used to be every 1.5-2 hours). He used to come home from school and the first words out of his mouth would be MILK, MILK, MILK, and now there’s never a hint that he wants to nurse, and I don’t offer. He doesn’t ask to nurse if he gets hurt anymore either. For most of his life, if he’s been hungry he’s asked to nurse before he asked for food to eat, and only recently that’s stopped too.

In the past week, Ash has been changing his going to sleep habit quite dramatically. He now nurses, but not to sleep- we’ll often drift in and out of consciousness together, but then I’ll take it away, and he’ll ask to cuddle, and then if he’s still not asleep after five more minutes of me laying there with him, I’ll tell him I’m going to go and for him to shut his eyes and go to sleep and I’ll see him soon. He says okay, and I sometimes sing him a couple of little songs that always relaxes him (from baby massage class when he was an infant), I kiss him on the forehead and leave the room. And he goes to sleep! Just like that! Not even a fuss! I can hardly even believe it. I never thought I’d see the day of an easy transition from needing to nurse to go to sleep to this. Granted, things often change without warning, and he could go back to needing a boob in his mouth in order to pass out, but right now I feel hopeful.

I have mixed feelings about all of this, of course. Nursing and co-sleeping are two of my favorite things about being a parent. I love the intimacy of a nursing relationship, especially with a busy toddler. I love how easy it is to make things better. I love that he’s still getting nutrition from me, and if his diet isn’t complete for a day or two that I don’t have to worry. I have an extreme sense of pride when I tell people that I’m still nursing him because I believe more people should nurse into toddlerhood. It’s not something to be ashamed of or to hide behind doors. I will happily nurse in public (not to make a statement, at all, I don’t want to set myself up for any kind of scrutiny) if he needs it, and I’ll happily nurse in private. I am not ashamed.

There will be a day when he decides he doesn’t want my milk anymore. I’m coming closer to accepting that. I feel a great sense of loss when I think about it, which I’ve expected I’d feel for a very, very long time, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I feel that if he wants to wean, it will probably be more of his decision than mine. I personally don’t feel ready to stop yet, and he definitely doesn’t yet either (at night, especially, when he pleads for milk), and maybe when he does want to wean I’ll be tired of nursing him and it’ll be a mutual agreement.

I don’t fear that we won’t be able to connect anymore; I know it will just be different… it’s a big part of our lives together that’s probably coming to an end sooner than later, and I do feel a bit sad. But we’ve almost made it! I feel so proud of overcoming hundreds of plugged ducts, mastitis, thrush, a nursing strike etc etc etc.

It’s been so worth it.

I’ve recently developed a fascination and utter love for Moss Terrariums. I’m not sure where it’s come from, other than seeing a lot of them on Etsy. I love their simplicity, I love the emotional connection I have to moss as a childhood plaything (I think this is a weird fact about me), and I especially love all the accessories people are coming up with to accompany them.

I especially love these, little gnome-sized clothes lines, complete with the day’s washings. And look at this! A fairy house with a swirly roof! To die for, people.

I started collecting some containers from Value Village this weekend to make some of my own for our new house. Here’s a little tutorial.

Speaking of our new house, have I told you the news? Our current lease was supposed to end the first of August, leaving us homeless until August 20, which is the earliest move-in date for the new place, but by a stroke of good luck, our landlord is letting us stay here until that time, despite needing to get all the windows in our apartment replaced (which will still happen, just with us here). So, this is great news and it makes Clive and I feel like everything is sincerely coming together. He and I can’t wait to move. We’re so cramped in our current apartment because of the extreme lack of storage space available and how much we need in order to have a comfortable and cozy home. It seems like such a small detail, but it turns out it’s extremely important for our quality of living. I even started taking stuff out of my mother’s attic for the first time in my entire life (read: ten years worth of photo albums with an extrodinary amount of embarassing pictures) because I’ll finally have somewhere to keep them. I can’t wait to show you all pictures (and for those IRL friends, to have you over for Ash’s second birthday party).

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Have any of you Canadians been so fortunate to try Tim Horton’s breakfast sandwiches? This is not a light statement for me: they’re about 10928325x better than Egg McMuffins. Go try one if you haven’t already. They’re seriously fucking delicious.

Dear Ash,

This month has started and ended with questions. Questions, questions, questions. What is that? Who is that? What’s that doing? Man doing? Baby doing? Worm doing? Ant doing? Trains doing? What is that? What is that? What is that? What daAat?

I answer every question as best I can, and just wait for the month when the question “Why?” comes into play. Oh dear. I wonder how long you’ve wanted to ask these things but didn’t have the verbal skills. I’m happy your dad and I have focused on speaking to you like a real person since you were a young baby, your verbal skills are impressive at this age. I expected this kind of behavior to come after two, not before. Not that I’m complaining- I think it’s pretty cute.

This month has really been nothing but rain- I’m serious when I say there was three straight weeks of rain, so we didn’t get to do very much on our days together. One day we went to the Halifax Harbour to see Theodore Tugboat “dedore tugboa!” as a family and that was nice.

I’m not sure if it’s you missing us or what it was, but you seriously kicked our butts this month with a little over a week of a major sleep regression, wherein you didn’t want to sleep before 10pm. Even with an hour or more of nursing or cuddling… I would lay in bed with you, doing both, for sometimes close to TWO hours, and when I thought you were asleep, you’d look over at me with a *blink, blink* and say, “hi!” and I’d realize that GODDAMNIT, all of that time for nothing. The only good thing about your sleep regression is that you didn’t necessarily need attention from us, so you’d be happy playing on the floor with your trains so that we could get work done.

One proud physical accomplishment you achieved this month (there haven’t been that many big ones since you started walking at a year) is that you learned how to jump- both feet off the air and everything. You hop around quite a lot now, it’s pretty cute if I do say so myself.

More than just the questions you’ve been asking, your sentences are filling in with words like “and” and “a” and “the” and becoming more complete. You’re learning how to count to twenty (you’re solid at ten, we’ve just started adding more numbers in recently), you know a lot of your ABCs and can recognize most of the letters of the alphabet. I kind of wish day care would take more initiative to have you learn these things, since you’re home with us not as often as I’d like you to be, but they’re happy with having you play outside and in the sandbox or with playdoh.

We’ve been focusing more on potty training, both at home and at school. You go primarily diaper free at home now, and have very few accidents. You will often ask to go on the “green potty!” if you need to pee, or I’ll hear you say, “no pee on the floor” and I know that you need to go, but your voice of reason has kicked in loud and clear and you’re verbalizing it. You’re still pooping in your diaper more often than not (a behavior that still surprises me, since it seems like it should be so counter-intuitive since you’ve been pooping on a potty since you were five months old). It’s really hard for me accept that you’re doing it, even though it’s been three months since you started school and therefore started pooping in your diaper. I’m not disappointed in you at all- more disappointed in myself that I forced you to be in this situation away from me where you don’t have the attention you need and deserve and therefore have no other alternative. I need to get over this!

This month you’ve started pretending. I’m not sure if it’s a learned behaviour – from school – or if it’s a developmental thing, but now when you see food in a book (like in The Very Hungry Caterpillar), you’ll pretend to be picking up the food and take nibbles. All I know is that it’s adorable.

You love cars. You know more car names than I can count. You spend hours and hours and hours driving your dinky cars on the couch, completely satisfied. I, myself, don’t get it though your father says he does- that when he was a kid he used to make up stories and statistics about each car, so I can only assume you’re doing a variation of that, and as your verbal skills improve, we’ll hear more and more of what is actually going on inside your head. You’re always fascinating to watch, I just can’t wait to hear more about what you think about.

I love this stage of non-stop talking. I love answering your questions and hearing you say, “ooOOoohh” afterwards, satisfied with my answer, whether or not you understand it fully or not. I love to see your personality developing and you becoming more and more like a little boy. There’s not much baby left in you, that’s for sure.

I love you more and more every single day. I miss you like crazy when I’m at work. It may sound strange when I admit this, but I often feel like I can’t ask questions about how your day was at school because I’m afraid that I’ll be too sad that I missed it, or I’ll hear that you fell and got hurt and that I wasn’t there to cuddle you (I know it happens- you have lots of bruises on your legs), or worse- that you cried for a long time- for whatever reason- and that you wanted me and I couldn’t be there. Most of your days are a mystery to me, and I know I’ll never get this time back, but it also means that I appreciate our moments together more, especially our nights, when you plead me to “cuddle, cuddle.”

I love you, Ash.

Love,
Mama.

I haven’t been inspired to sew all week. Instead I’ve been filling my down time with Big Brother UK, which is so much better than Big Brother US, I cannot even begin to tell you. This one makes the US version feel so contrived and lame. For my British readers: thank fuck Shree is gone, I could not stand to see him speak.

You don’t need to watch the show to find this funny.

***

I’m developing a love for wall clocks. I’m not sure where it is coming from, but I would like to start a small collection of them. I’m not one for collecting things, other than empty boxes (this habit goes back about 20 years) and cookie cutters (also a new habit). To start my collection of wall clocks, I bought this one yesterday. I’m never one to buy things like this for myself, but I have some pretend money (read: PayPal money) around and since it’s not actually in my bank account it doesn’t feel like it actually exists anyway.

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Work is great. My sister commented the other day that my boss and I have a good rapport, and it’s nice to hear it from an outside source as well as feeling it myself. When two people spend more time with each other than our own husbands and/or children, it’s important to me that we get along. And we do. Going to work is never tedious, I’m rarely bored, and even though I talk about the same things every day, I always enjoy it. Usually after three months of working somewhere I start dreading it, but never with this one, even though it’s just retail. It helps that I’m filled with passion for most everything that we sell… the only thing I have a hard time faking is the crib, because I love co-sleeping so much and would recommend it to everyone if I had the chance.

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I’ve decided that once we’re settled in our new place and Ash turns two, I’m going to night wean. Or attempt to. I’m tired of being woken up every couple of hours for a three-minute nursing session. It’s been long enough. Part of me loves it- our special bonding time when the house is black and we’re half asleep, but the other part of me really would love a full night’s sleep, and I think he’s probably capable waking up less if there’s no milk.

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We haven’t reached the “Terrible Twos” yet, though I anticipate they will arrive within the next few months. I jokingly say that “Ash is pretty much my bitch” but it’s true. If I say stop, he’ll stop. If I say go, he’ll go. This is wonderful and is the way it’s always been for us, but I know it won’t last forever. If we do have issues or meltdowns, I refer to the strategies recommended by Dr. Harvey Karp in The Happiest Toddler on the Block (except for where he says it’s okay to lock a child in a car or in a room to finish the tantrum, and he also says it’s okay to let a child cry which of course I do not believe in), specifically his Fast Food Rule.

I’m wondering, from those of you who have older children than mine and who share similar parenting philosophies, what books do you recommend? I’ve heard that 1-2-3 Magic is good, but I have no idea if it’s suitable for someone like me.

For the rest of the week, all Canadian buyers can ignore the “USD” and pay in LOONIES instead! When you checkout, do not pay- instead, wait for me to send you an invoice in Canadian dollars. Happy Canada Day!

Occasionally Ash suffers from minor sleep regressions, but we’re in the midst of a terrible one right now, one where he will not fall asleep until about 10pm, often when I just give up and go to bed too. He’s normally a great sleeper- since he was two months old he’s had a strict 7pm bedtime that he’s willingly adhered to, but this week, even after 20-90 minutes of nursing, I’ll take him off the boob and see the dreaded, *blink blink* of his eyes, which means he’s not even CLOSE to falling asleep. KILLS ME. I hope it passes soon. I NEED my evenings!

***

My tattoo is all healed. Shea butter brings out the colours much more vibrantly than anything else I’ve used. There’s a part of the wave that didn’t heal well and is kind of blotchy, and there’s another part near my toes where the ink has bled quite a lot into my skin, leaving a halo of gray, but other than that I quite enjoy it. I don’t feel lopsided and kind of enjoy only having one foot done. This is good news considering 1. the extreme lack of talented artists on the east coast and 2. how much it fucking hurt, despite having given birth before.

Note: those shoes were found at Value Village today for $2.99! Score.

***

We found a house!

I cannot believe the number of absolute shit places I saw, so many that I was losing hope of ever finding somewhere nice. I decided a long time ago that I was going to put up posters around our neighbourhood, advertising that I wanted to find a nice cozy home for us. Last Wednesday I did so- I taped about ten of them to telephone poles, and it was only a couple of hours later that I got a call from someone who said they lived in a nice place but bought a house of their own and were moving in August.

They welcomed me into their beautiful home to check it out and I IMMEDIATELY fell in love and knew that I had found our new home. It’s a two bedroom apartment in an old house (bottom floor with tall ceilings), with a nice kitchen, dining room, living room and front entrance with a huge coat closet. We plan on giving Ash his own room, a place where we can put all of his toys and his little mattress, though I imagine he’ll still be spending nights with us, but I’d like to have him nap in his own room. This means minimal toys in our living room, which frankly, is about time. He’s got such nice toys- rarely a plastic one- but they take up so much room and are often underfoot and just annoying to have around all the time.

The bathroom has a claw foot tub, and is much bigger than our current one, where there is literally no room for Ash’s potty, so he ends up pooping and peeing in the hall. There’s a back yard area and a huge front deck. We have a driveway! It’s in the neighbourhood I wanted to be in, near the grocery store I like to shop at, and is within walking distance of my job, Ash’s day care and is closer to Clive’s work as well.

The best part of the new place is the basement. It’s HUGE. There’s a washer and dryer, and SO MUCH STORAGE space we can hardly believe it. The floor is concrete, but it’s painted and smooth and it means that Ash will be able to drive around his tricycle in the winter or push around his cars with ease. It’s going to be somewhere for Clive to store all of his dangerous fishing lure supplies and for me to store my thousands of dollars worth of fabric I’ve accumulated, instead of having it out in the open and ugly as hell. We could put a ping pong table/pool table down there if we wanted to, and still have massive amounts of storage. We have so much stuff, that storage has always been a big problem for us, so this solves everything.

The only problem is that our current lease runs out on Aug 1, and the earliest we’re going to be able to move in will be Aug 16, so I’m not sure how that’s going to work out. It’s worth two weeks of upheaval, this place is just that great. I cannot wait to move!

I think one of the most annoying things about entering Ash into day care is that he’s no longer pooping on the potty, as he has been since he was five months old.

Elimination Communication has always been a big part of my belief system, something I learned about from Ashley and a few other moms when I was involved with BME, and Clive and I have been “ECing” with Ash since he was three months old. We did it “part time,” really only focusing on his pooping, never trying to catch pees regularly, outside of the ones immediately after he’d wake up (read: the easy ones). When he was really young, he’d sieze up when we’d put him on the potty, so when we’d see that he was pooping, we’d simply cue him (with a sing songy “poopoo”) and then when he was five months old he started pooping regularly on the potty. We’d change about one poopy diaper every couple of weeks, often when Ash was suffering from a food sensitivity or a change in schedule.

It was thrilling to be in tune with Ash’s elimination needs and to not just forfeit to diapers, to be able to recognize his signs that he need to poop and instead of watching him poop in his pants, to put him on the potty instead. It’s extremely simple and I’m often amazed that parents would CHOOSE to let their children go in a diaper, and clean them up immediately (or not), when little cleanup is necessary than your own bottoms when you poop in a toilet.

We would take our potty seat everywhere with us- to Georgia, to Cuba, to Ontario, to my parent’s house an hour away, and he would routinely go wherever we were.

That is, until I went back to work and he started day care. The past 18 months of ECing has basically gone down the toilet because he will now only poop in his diaper. Today, actually, was the first day that he pooped (started in his diaper, finished on the potty) at day care, 2.5 months after he first started being away from me. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.

That being said, we keep him diaper free as much as we can while he’s at home with us, and he’s peeing SO much more than he ever has in his potty. It’s pretty awesome. I can often tell when he needs to pee either by my intuition (most frequently), or to a lesser extent when he starts getting angry for no reason and will often refuse to sit on his potty but immediately after pee on the floor, or sometimes he’ll tell me that he needs to pee and/or will sit on the potty himself.

I think we’re actually delving into real Potty Training at this point, as there’s no cuing anymore. We’ve had more “accidents” on the floor than ever, but even though I often feel like ECing was a bit of a waste, I’m thrilled that poopy diapers were very rare, and I think he’s more aware of his bodily functions than a lot of boys his age (as boys tend to potty train older than girls). I wish his babysitters and day care workers could have kept up with his potty habits better, but I understand that this is part of the deal. No one is more attentive than I am.

I love the idea that we could be pretty much out of diapers within the next couple of months. I’m tired of them. My bumGenius diapers are wearing out and I don’t feel like buying any more. Trainers are next! Oh, the exciting life of a parent!