Bummer...

I've decided to wait on the potty training with Aiden. It will still be available if he wants to try, but I'm not going to push it. Chris and I talked and I think we are going to wait until we move to try again, that way he'll be a little older and Chris will be home to help me. I think it might have been too much to try it right now with everything else that I have to do right now! And hopefully if we wait until he's almost 3, it will go quickly!

Day Three

Well, yesterday he only allowed me to put him on the potty one time, and he didn't go. As much as I was looking forward to him being out of diapers, I just don't think he's ready for this yet. Even when he does go, he'll go again in his pants 5 minutes later, I don't think he understands the concept of going completely on the potty. He's like a dog, a little here, a little there...it's very frustrating to have him go on the potty and still wet himself 5 minutes later! It was like that all day the first day, and now he wants nothing to do with it. So I guess we wait.... :-(

Morning Day Two

Okay, I put Aiden on the potty first thing this morning, or should I say, I tried to put him on the potty. He refused to have anything to do with it, and my attempts were met with kicking and screaming. So I backed off and I'm going to keep asking him today, but I'm starting to think that he may not be ready for this whole potty training thing yet. It shouldn't be a big fight, right? If he was ready he would want to do this. So we'll keep trying for a day or two, but if he doesn't start getting more excited or if he keeps fighting me like this I am going to stop and try again in a couple of weeks.

Day One

Day one isn't over yet, but we are making progress! We have had 5 successful potty attempts, several unsuccessful and about 5 zillion accidents. I think this kid pees every 10 minutes. I am on my third load of wash right now, good thing I bought lots of underwear! But really, I think we might go back to the Pull-ups for a few days, until he gets the hang of telling me when he has to go. Because, to be honest, the wet underwear isn't really phasing him that much, and I'm tired of changing him every 10 minutes. If it were making him more aware of when he was wet, I would keep him in them, but I don't think they are doing anything except making more work for me. So we will continue for the next few days with the Pull-ups, see if he continues to make progress.

But YAY for Aiden, he's on his way to being a big boy!!

And So It Begins - Potty Training

Aiden's potty training will officially commence in the morning. I guess that means that I have to actually get up with him first thing in the morning, huh? Usually he wakes up around 7 and I lay in bed and doze until 8. He just plays in his room, perfectly content, so I figure why get up if I don't have to? But if I want to catch him before he goes, I guess I'd better get my butt out of bed....Chris so owes me for this, he's supposed to be potty training the boys....

Walk This Way

Walk This Way

To those of us with very small children, the milestone of walking is something that is very highly anticipated. You just can’t wait for those little legs to start toddling across the floor. My son Aiden took his first steps about a month before his first birthday. He took 3 steps toward me, and then later that night took 4 steps toward his Daddy. We were so excited! It’s finally happening, we thought; he’s going to start walking!

Only, he didn’t.

He took those few steps and then went back to crawling with even more speed and gusto than he had previously shown, which is saying something. He had two gears when it came to crawling – leisurely and full speed ahead. If he was just crawling around with no particular destination he went slowly, taking the time to examine every speck of dirt and who knows what that he came across. But when he was on a mission (say, headed for the open bathroom door or maybe a cup of water that someone had left within his reach), he would put his head down, rock back and forth a couple of times and then take off with enough speed to rival a 747 down the runway. It was truly amazing to watch. I had no idea that such a small person could be capable of such speed! So it’s no wonder that those few slow, wobbly steps did not exactly inspire him to uprightness. Why should he plod along (falling down most of the time) on 2 legs when he could get where he was going twice as fast on all fours? This little boy didn’t have time for that – he was way too busy exploring the world to deal with annoying things like learning to walk.

But Mommy and Daddy kept at it. We kept standing him up and pushing him to walk, over and over and over again, until finally he started to take the hint. He was almost 13 months old by this time, and it seemed like he was taking FOREVER to get the hang of it. Slowly but surely he started walking more and more, getting more confident by the day. Eventually the day came when he started initiating steps by himself, walking from the couch to his toy box, and things like that. It was so amazing to see my baby boy turn into a little person by doing something as simple as walking – something we grown-ups sometimes take for granted.

Now he has to walk everywhere. By himself. It was much faster when I just carried him, but noooo, I had to teach him to walk. It forces us to go slowly, so that he can keep up. I think that sometimes we forget to go slow. We are in such a hurry to get wherever we are going that we don’t take the time to really appreciate what it’s all about. It’s not about working your whole life to gain something you can’t take with you. It’s not about the job, the house, the clothes or the rat race. It’s about watching your son walk across the living room floor all by himself. We taught him something he needs, and he taught us something in return -

Sometimes you have to take baby steps.

The First Word

In the interests of getting this blog up and running, I'm going to post some stories I wrote when Aiden was little. Well, littler, anyway. So here it is, the first post in Mommyland...

THE FIRST WORD

As with all new parents, I was eagerly awaiting my son Aiden’s first word. He was 10 months old, and I assumed that since he was obviously a genius, it would be coming any day. After months of adorable, pointless blabbering, I couldn’t wait until he opened his little mouth and blurted out “Mama.” I knew that the joy I would feel at hearing my newly acquired (and now favorite) title being spoken by my little angel, who absorbed 110% of my time, would be unmatched. The anticipation was killing me, when would he say it? When would he speak my name?

One evening my husband Chris and I were sitting on the couch in the living room, watching TV. Aiden was playing on the floor, jabbering on and on in his indecipherable baby language. Chris was trying to get his attention, and was being steadfastly and purposely ignored.

“Aiden,” I said to him, “Where’s Daddy?” At that moment, the unthinkable occurred. Aiden looked up at me, pointed to Chris and said, “Dada!”

Total silence enveloped the room.

As if in slow motion, I see Chris’ face light up. All that joy that was supposed to be mine first, shown on his face like a beacon. “Did you hear him??” he asked (rather loudly, what, did he think I was deaf?). “He said Dada!!”

“Yeah, I heard,” My complete lack of enthusiasm was not infectious as Chris enveloped Aiden in a bear hug accompanied by a cascade of cute baby giggles.

How could this have happened? What twist of cosmic events had allowed such a travesty to occur? Dada is his first word? Dada? Had I not been the one to endure what surely could be called mountains of poopy diapers? Had I not been the one to take care of all those midnight feedings and all those “I don’t care that it’s 3 in the morning, I just want to be up” times? Wasn’t it me who had caught most of the spit-up with my shirt, pants, hands or other body parts? It wasn’t fair!

Of course, he is a boy. He’s supposed to be ornery. Never mind that his mother is the one who carried him for 9 long months, the one whose ribs were kicked from the inside and whose feet swelled up to the size of what felt like watermelons. Never mind 21 hours of labor and delivery. Daddy is his favorite toy. What a little punk. Dada, my butt.

Aiden realized the effect his new word had on his Daddy, and proceeded to repeat it over and over again, much to the amazement and delight of my husband. I shook my head and thought to myself, “He’s only 10 months old, and already I’m taken for granted.” Such is the calling of motherhood, I suppose.

That night as I lay in bed (Chris snoring next to me, his world now complete), I thought about that first word. I thought about the wonderment that is my child and realized that my son spoke. He spoke. He communicated his thoughts through language. Clearly, at that. What an amazing accomplishment! Not just for him, but also for Chris and I. It meant we weren’t failing as parents; our son was growing and learning things he would need to know as a human person! It didn’t matter what he said, it was the fact that he spoke at all that was important. As I experienced this moment of clarity, I realized something else as well. I was thrilled beyond measure. Aiden had reached a milestone, and I was lucky enough to have witnessed it.

He did eventually say “Mama”, and I was filled with that joy I knew I would feel. There is just one problem.

He won’t stop saying it.