Happy 2nd Birthday Delia!

Delia had a wonderful birthday! I can't believe my baby is 2!! She got so many gifts! A mermiad doll, play pots and pans, a tike, shopping cart, a glow worm, bubbles, clothes, and lots of books. I made her a butterfly birthday cake (my fisrt attempt to making a birthday cake) and it came out okay. she was playing outside and more or less running like usual and she fell and skinned her knee pretty bad (bleeding) and it was no big deal to her! Yikes. So we put a bandaid on her which she is terrified of...hmm I thought getting the "littlest pet shop' bandaids would make it better, but you would think for should a tough girl she would be fine with bandaid! silly girl ;) nobody but Delia ate cake because we were all still full from pizza, so now I have a lot of cake and icecream sitting around, which is NOT GOOD!! Delia loved her Balloons! She kept saying "boom" snd the "M" sound is clear, so funny! she insisted I tie one around her wrist while she ate lunch! I have been asking Delia for the past couple of weeks how old she is going to be, she holds up her two pointer fingers, but says "free"(three) and I try to get her to say 2, but she won't. Lately to get her to obey I have been counting to 3 and everytime I get to 2 she says 3, so now she thinks When you say 2 it means 3...sheesh kiddo! Memories. I know in time I will miss all of that!! I already miss her baby days..looks like it's time for another ;) I'm so glad she had a fun time, she was super happy!

Potty Training Success...So Far!!

Here is a picture of Delia on her potty. The Treat bucket and the stickers!!

So I jumped on the potty training wagon this past thursday and it did not start out so well. That first morning wasn't terribly bad. She went twice on the potty with only 2 accidents. After naptime, the rest of the day was just accidents.

2nd day of Training: All accidents, 2 of wich were my fault because I wan't watching her closely enough to see the signs! But generally Delia likes to sit on the potty. I was ready to give up! Before starting all I heard was, "girls are easy to train" "my girls didn't have 1 accident!" etc. so it got me excited and kind of help my anxiety a little. But this was far from easy and she seemed to be having nothing but accidents. I knew she was ready, so why was this so hard? After talking to my own mother, she told me that I took 3 months. Then Christian's mom told me that some kids will do great one day and horrible the next, it's just a matter of them getting it and to not give up yet. So after those encouraging words...I persevered! then..

3rd day of Training: Completely catastrophic! 9 accidents!! I was really trying better on this day, but Delia outright refusued to sit on the potty! When I was able to get her to sit on it by some miracle, she only stayed 2 seconds! I was getting so frustrated by now. Then I figuered out, Delia defiantely know when she has to go potty, but is all of the sudden afraid to "go" in the potty. When she showed signs, I would sit her down and she would literally hold heself while on the potty. trying to be ecouraging to let he know it was okay, she still was terribly afraid. It was the sadest thing to watch. Once the crying started I had to let her get off..it was just not worth torturing her over this (it seemed apparent it was) Then of course 5 mins. later another accident! Why were we running into this snag..it seemed there was a piece of the puzzle missing!

So trying to figure out what was wrong, I came to this conclusion, she was just plain afraid to pee! It didn't matter where! Of course I had been trying to teach her that peeing in your pants is not fun and that we don't do it, but we go in the potty. Somehow maybe she had become terribly confused and thought that peeing, whether in her pants or the potty was bad! That's the only thing Could think of. So that being said, I had to find a way to get her to sit on the potty and make it fun. but what? Plus I had to get her to "go" on the potty one more time to show her that it IS exciting. So later that night after dinner I tried one more time to get her to go, knowing she fully had to. I forced her to sit on the potty in a happy loving way. Yes, I know that sounds awful, but I had a plan! after about 15 mins of trying tom get her to stay on the potty and many tears. She went..just couldn't hold it anymore, and you could see the fear in her eyes for 2 seconds until I made it into a positive thing and got very, very excited. Her face suddenly litt up and became happy again. Then we followed all the steps afterwards, wiping, dumping the bucket, flushing, etc. she seemed to like it. Okay, so maybe there still is a chance! She had enough for that day and went to bed..in her nighttime diaper.

4th Day of Training: I got out the colorful girly stickers, 1200, and decided to use them for Delia's training. I would let her choose about 3 stickers while she sat on the potty just to make sitting on the potty fun. It seemed to work! When I tried to get her to sit on it without them, she would run away, but when I pulled out the stickers..she came right back. So maybe I was on to somehting here. Maybe I found a way the suits Delia best? She stayed dry all morning! 2.5 hours! unil right before lunch, I encouraged her to sit once more and while she was choosing her sticker, she was really relaxed and suddenly looked up at me with a smile and gasped! she was "going"!! Hooray!! I was so excited we both were!! So she got a butterfinger! she was so proud of herself! It was a special moment for both of us! Later that day she went 4 more times, 2 of which she did all by herself! she is so cute she says.."A-self, mommy" and the best part about the whole thing for Delia..other than the treat, she gets to dump the bucket in the big toilet and flush all by herself. I don't know why that is exciting to her, but it is! We still continue to have success. If she continues down this path the rest of the week, maybe we will have a potty trained big girl in the house! Crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath!