Pantsless Peril

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but it *appears* that I have successfully potty trained a child BEFORE the age of three. And it’s even my OWN kid! Wee-hooo! Jonah has done great learning to use the potty and I am so PROUD of him!  He just has two hurdles to get over before he goes to preschool January 6.

1) He doesn’t want to use a “big” potty/potty away from home

2) He needs to take his pants and underwear a-l-l the way o-f-f before he will sit on the potty.

Ergh…since there’s no tiny froggy potty at school AND going n-a-k-e-d from the waist down at school is generally frowned upon, we still have some work to do in the next 6-7 weeks. But he hasn’t had an accident and has stayed dry in all the public places we’ve been to, because he can hold it a really long time. Still, I need him to decide he will use the potty outside of our home!

The other *issue* I’m having is, well…he likes to de-pants himself a lot. Even when he doesn’t have to go to the potty. At some point in the late afternoon or early evening I generally get worn down from re-pantsing him and just let him go commando.

He then performs his favorite superhero routine by pretending to be Super Grover over and over and over and jumping off the edge of our couch with his junk flapping in the breeze. It’s pretty cute. Except for that most superheroes wear clothes…because if they didn’t that would be pretty creepy and illegal.

“Help me! Help me Super Grover!”

“Up, Up & Away! Da-da-da-da-da-DA!”

Jonah collage edit

I’m not sure how he’s saving lives by flying through the air half-naked and then landing in a pile of giggles on the couch, but hey, PRETEND PLAY FTW!

Of course he also likes to nude it up all over the rest of the house. Reading books, eating snack, playing cars = all way more fun when ya ain’t got pants on.

There are just a *couple* things that worry me about this.

A) Will he be able to have children one day? I don’t know, I mean, he’s never appeared to have injured himself up to this point. He’s also very careful to remove ALL materials from the couch before he starts his jumping-off routine. Still, accidents happen!

B) This one has already happened actually. You see, Jonah has an older sister who just had a birthday. That means there is an abnormally high concentration of glitter in our home at the moment. You know how glitter is, it just multiples for about 6 months after application and by the time it dies out, it’s time for another craft or birthday party. So there’s a lot of glitter lurking in my living room at the moment. Which means: Jonah’s junk is kinda sparkly.

It’s a vicious cycle: bathe him, clothe him, he nudes up when you’re not looking, and 3 minutes later: glittery junk.

I’m thinking we better get a handle on this at least before he’s in a junior-high locker room situation.

Or MAYBE I should just be more vigilant about keeping PANTS on my kid…but he’s a sneaky fellow, and not above pretending to have to go to the potty to have a nudepertunity!

But hey, let’s get back to the part where I potty trained a kid BEFORE HE WAS THREE! It only took me three weeks, too…you can order the engraving on my Mom of the Year plaque…NOW.

Do you have any kids in your house who prefer to live life un-clothed?

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Be Glad I’m Not Your Mom: Sick Toddler Edition

sick jonah
Yes, this IS as fun as it looks!

So, Jonah is sick with a bad cold. It is just that, a bad cold. Low fever, bad cough, lots of snot, nothing a doctor can do anything about. And what else does he have that a doctor can’t fix?

A mother who is super, super OVER IT. This is day 5, people. DAY FIVE. At the outset I can be super-cuddly-let-me-soothe-you-my-poor-baby Mom, but by now I’m like suck-it-up-and-quit-your-whining-a-cold-is-no-excuse-for-tyranny Mom. OH MY GOSH!!!!

Jonah is my kid who gets, pardon my French, SUPER-PISSED when he’s sick. My usually cheerful boy wakes up mad at the world and screams about anything and everything for the first hour or two of his day. Especially if one of the other two kids opens their mouths or approaches him. So this morning I’m like, at the end of my rope on DAY FIVE, yelling at the other kids to QUIT TALKING, because it makes Jonah mad. Yes, that’s right. The Snot King demands ABSOLUTE SILENCE. And he would also prefer that you don’t look at him. Avert. Your. Eyes.

Part of the reason my fuse is so short is because when something hangs on this long, worry sets in. Every coughing fit causes me great anxiety. Last night his temperature went up half a degree and I was mentally on my way to the emergency room. I try to push the panic aside as I forge ahead slathering Vicks (silver lining: I LOVE THE SMELL OF VICKS!) all over his chest, which makes him scream, which makes me irritable and shortens that ever-shrinking bit of nerve I’ve got left. Every time I take his temp or – God-forbid – give him medicine, I have to wrestle him into submission. It. Is. Exhausting.

His cough has woken him up, kept him up, and shortened his much-needed naps, which does nothing for either of our moods. And all of it, the lack of rest, the worry, the irritation, has made me pretty much non-functional in other areas.  My house is a wreck, I can barely write a coherent thought, and it takes a huge amount of effort to do the dishes or make a peanut butter sandwich or OH MY WORD, help the big kids with HOMEWORK. As a matter of fact, my head about explodes when the older two walk in from school. Meeting the demands of Angry Toddler while trying to meet the needs of the other kids almost undid me last night. My ability to multi-task is NIL at this point.

In addition, Jonah has missed his toddler speech class (you know, the one he hates but HAS to get used to before preschool??) for two weeks in a row because he also had a weird one-day fever last Tuesday, which is his class day. So that causes me stress as well. If he is not better for his regular speech therapy session tomorrow, you will find me standing on the edge of a bridge.

I know this is just a cold. I know it is not a big deal. I know it could be much worse.  I ALSO KNOW I CAN’T WAIT FOR IT TO BE GONE. I know I have lost most of a week. I know I miss my cheerful boy. I know it is going to be very difficult for me to wean him back off of TV. I know I am really, really, glad I bought a 2 Liter of Mountain Dew on my escapade to find homeopathic cough medicine last night. I know this too shall pass.

I also know you should be very glad I’m not YOUR mom.

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My Toddler Talks: Review & Giveaway

This is a book review, y’all. The book was provided to me by the author but all opinions are my own!

As toddlers will do, Jonah has recently switched things up on me when it comes to speech. Remember that post I wrote a few weeks ago about us getting into our therapy groove? Yeah, 2.2 seconds after I hit publish, he decided to stop cooperating with me at home! I’m not. even. kidding. Not even a little. He is still doing great at his therapy sessions, but as soon as I strap him in his booster seat at home he kicks up a fuss. So, I got him a (free, thanks Sarah!!) little table to sit at like he does at speech – that worked for a day or two. But he still wasn’t having it once he realized what I was up to.

jonah at table
No,YOUR house is a giant mess in the background of this photo! Mine is always perfect.

He still loves to sit at to do his OWN thing, however, and I’m glad we have it! I also casually leave things on it that I want him to play with and that usually works {insert diabolical laugh}.

So, frustrated with this situation, I did what most moms do – turned to the internet (specifically Pinterest, DUH) for a solution. I follow the boards of an awesome organization called PediaStaff (you should too) and through their boards I found a great website that caused me to breathe a sigh of relief – Scanlon Speech Therapy. As I was devouring the contents of this site, I found that it is written by a Speech-Language Pathologist named Kim Scanlon who is herself the mother of a toddler – jackpot! I subscribed to her newsletter and printed out some of her free resources. Then, I checked out her book:

MyToddlerTalksHeader

My Toddler Talks: Strategies and Activities to Promote Your Child’s Language Development.

And of course I knew I had to have it!! So naturally, I emailed Kim and asked if I could review a copy. Cause THAT is how I roll. You see, part of the problem we moms face when we work with our kids at home on delays is: WHAT TO DO!! It’s hard to constantly come up with new activities. And since Jonah is a whole year younger than Sophie was when we started working together, it’s totally different, and I need some help coming up with things.

My Toddler Talks has a TON of play ideas for working with your toddler. Like, about 50 pages worth. And the best part is, they are all using toys you probably already have! Like? A BALL. A Mr. Potato Head. Toy trains. A toy farm. Bubbles!!! Yes! I have all those things! And Kim’s book told me just what to do with them to encourage speech in my kiddo. All the activities are simple, step-by-step, and easy for parents to facilitate. She also has a website JUST for toddler & baby speech in addition to her Scanlon Speech site. Check it out here!

potatohead2
Jonah meets one Mr. P. Head.

Of course, the book isn’t all about play – it also goes over the basics of how to talk to your toddler to encourage speech, and what activities and language are appropriate for their ages/stages of development. Very useful stuff for any parent. In fact, the book is really written for parents who want to encourage even very young toddlers on the path to speech development – not necessarily toddlers who are already behind (though of course that is the case with mine). So, I would really recommend it for any parent of an infant to three-year-old, delayed or not.

This is a great book and you should totally go buy it. And subscribe to Kim’s newsletter while you’re at it.

Because Kim is so aweeeeesome, she also offered a copy of My Toddler Talks to give away! Woop woop! Here’s how to enter:

1) Leave a comment on this post telling me why you want to win the book.

2) Optional: extra entry available for those who “like” Scanlon Speech on Facebook. Leave a separate comment to let me know that you do.

3) Optional: extra entry for subscribing to Kim’s newsletter. (Click here, enter your name and email address on the right.) It’s SO HELPFUL! You won’t regret it. Leave a separate comment here if you subscribed.

Remember to leave a separate comment for each entry! 

Giveaway ends Monday September 16th at 6 pm EST and a winner will be chosen at random.

Good luck! Thanks Kim, for letting me review your book and give one away!

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