At long last, my PreschoolRock.com section website, Potty Training, is live!
I am the new Potty Training writer, and looking over my new site I am struck by a single resounding thought:
I need to get a new picture of myself…
I am a potty training expert. And if you give me another week and another five rounds of revisions, I’ll have the website to prove it!
Recently PreschoolRock.com has taken a chance on me and I’ve begun building their potty training section. My work has been revised, updated, tweaked and finessed and now is undergoing its final review. If I pass inspection, it will go live and my expert status will be announced to the world.
That being said, Jake has yet to poop in the potty. But maybe that’s why I’m an expert. I KNOW potty training like every other mom expert out there. (Not that we’re potty training…)
A few weeks ago we had a stomach bug, and I learned a lot about dealing with diarrhea. If your little one is struck down with diarrhea, here’s what worked for us:
Infants:
-Wait a day to see if it will just run its course.
-Make sure your formula isn’t diluted; full strength formula can be constipating which is good in this case.
-If infant diarrhea lasts longer than 24-48 hours, call your doctor. You might even want to call sooner.
-They will most likely tell you to take your baby off formula (I’m not sure about breast milk) and give him Pedialyte instead for 24 hours.
-Then you’ll do half formula and half Pedialyte for a day or two
-And finally you’ll be back on full formula, and hopefully the diarrhea will be cleared up.
*A note – be sure to stock up on diaper rash ointment and use it liberally. There is nothing worse than a baby who’s tummy and butt hurts.
Toddlers:
I sincerely feel that toddler diarrhea was worse than infant diarrhea. Infants don’t walk with theirs….
Unless you have an amazingly helpful husband and a bathroom large enough for your whole family, most likely you’re in charge of bath time – or maybe your husband is. In my house, going from one toddler to one toddler plus one newborn at bath time was tricky.
So I just threw them both in the bath. Of course I waited until Brian’s little belly button was healed, but now both boys go into the tub at the same time.
Jake goes on the end next to the faucet and Brian lays on his little mesh bath chair at the other end. I kneel in the middle. Jake, the oldest, goes first. We wash his hair and then soap him up. We rinse and he happily plays with his toys and “helps” wash Brian after that.
Here’s my method for Cry It Out. There are many different ones and mine is a combination of many “expert” opinions. After all, I’m the real expert on my kiddos.
1. Wait until your baby is at least four months old. Ideally you’ve been letting them fall asleep on their own since birth (after rocking, of course), which will make it easier. But if not, never fear – the end result is the same.
2. Establish a solid bedtime routine. This will clue your baby in that it’s sleep time every night. Be sure you’re starting bedtime around the same time every night when your child looks sleepy (Not after she’s fussing.)
3. The first night, go through your routine. Bathe, rock, snuggle, nurse or feed, and then sing or rock some more. Instead of waiting for your baby to fall sound asleep, as soon as you see her eyes drifting shut, gently place her in the crib.
4. Her eyes will most likely pop open and she’ll wonder why in the world she’s not still in your arms.
My oldest had a sleep problem. By four months he was waking up every two hours at night and had been sleeping four or five when he came home from the hospital. After examining the problem and researching it, I discovered that we were the problem.
Apparently, rocking my baby to sleep all the time and putting him down only when he was knocked out didn’t teach him to fall asleep on his own. In fact, he liked the rocking and Mommy so much, he wanted to do it again every time he came out of a deep sleep at night – every two hours.
I love Jenny McCarthy. She’s hilarious and speaks (and writes) the way I think. Of course I can’t speak that way since I teach and parent, but I love reading her books. I laughed at the first one. I laughed harder at the second. And then I cried reading her latest.
Louder than Words
(This is the continuation of the Newborn and Baby sleep posts)
Just when you think you’ve got your nights figured out, you get a toddler. Infant issues often seem mild by comparison. Your infant can’t talk back. Your infant most likely won’t follow you out of the room, and your infant often doesn’t realize that the rest of the world isn’t going to bed at 7pm. (Although you may wish you were.)
Foundations
Ideally you’ve set the foundations for sleep as your little one was growing. Hopefully somewhere along the line, she’s learned to fall asleep on her own or at least is only waking up once to eat by the time she’s a year old. In theory babies shouldn’t be waking up past 9 months to eat, but as the mother of huge babies, I say, if they’re hungry – feed them. After all, my kids at least will be twice the size of most by the fifth grade.
I’ve mentioned before that bedtimes are early in my house. This is for two reasons.
1. It keeps me sane and gives me time to work.
2. It makes my kids happy and healthier.
Bedtimes for kids should follow their natural rhythms. The body has circadian rhythms that give us cues for sleeping and being awake. If you don’t sleep when your body thinks it should, you’ll wake up tired. If you sleep too long, the same thing happens. But if you sleep during the “ideal” times, you wake up feeling rested and ready to go.
So when are these ideal times? They vary by person and child, but for the average baby and toddler, bedtime should be 6-8pm, and morning should start at 6-8am. Yes, it’s early. But it’s far better to have a rested and happy child. Besides, in a few years you won’t be able to get them out of bed in the mornings and you can sleep in then. And I’m counting on it.
It never fails. I had just posted about the early bedtime, when we were struck down. Hard. A stomach bug is a bad thing when you’re single. It’s far worse when you have it, your toddler has it, and you’re trying to protect your infant. There are a few things to be learned from a stomach bug, however.
1. Pull-ups are not very good for toddlers with diarrhea.
2. Toddler vomit in the middle of night is far worse than toddler vomit during the day.
3. Toddlers don’t like Pedialyte. At least mine doesn’t.
There are so many baby items I got with my first, I couldn’t imagine needing more- until I was pregnant with my second. Then there were a few things I realized I didn’t get the first time, so I was sure to get the second. None were necessary, but they were fun to find. This round of infant required a Boppy pillow
Now, there is only one baby item left to buy that I honestly thought I wouldn’t need. But now having tried to walk to the park with a thirty-four pound toddler in a hiking backpack pushing his almost seventeen pound brother in the stroller, I’ve decided I want a double stroller.
It’s an odd thing, but if I can muster up the energy to climb on the treadmill at the end of the day, I’ll have extra energy the next day – even if I have to stay up later to do it. Like I said, it’s odd.
Exercise gives me (and presumably you) an endorphin kick and it also helps energize me the following day. Thirty or forty-five minutes on the treadmill should be burning off some calories, which I serious need, but it also is building up muscles and repairing the damage lack of exercise has done.
I’ll admit it, I didn’t exercise properly for the last two years. Coincidently my son is now two.
Exercising with a Baby
It should have been easy. There are tons of ways to exercise with a baby, and for a long time, we were doing just fine.
My boys are going to be like peas in a pod. This is clear by the fact that they have already synchronized their bowel movements.
Jake, being a toddler, will make a dirty diaper and continue to play without alerting me to its presence. Meanwhile Brian, the seven-week-old infant, will be leisurely sucking at his bottle, halfway through a feeding and pause to make one of his own.
We put down the bottle to change Brian’s diaper and sibling rivalry rears its head.
Going to the grocery store with a toddler and an infant is rather complicated it seems. My toddler and infant are slightly more complicated than most because my youngest son has outgrown the infant carrier at six weeks of age. Yet another joy of parenting big babies.
We’ve been out and about almost every day since I was “allowed” to after Brian’s birth. Going out with an infant and toddler doesn’t have to be terrifying.
1. Go Early. Presumably your household is up early with two little ones, so head out as soon as you can. The store will be less crowded which saves more than a few Mommy headaches.
I’ve been obsessed with my older son’s sleep habits for awhile now. He woke up to eat at night for over two years, with a few ‘sleep through the night” breaks in between. He’s moved to the Big Boy Bed and does just fine. He’s now sleeping through the night, thankfully, but I’ve got a new issue – he takes over an hour to fall asleep at night.
I have serious help on my side. Weissbluth’s Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child is my guidebook to sleep. We are slaves to naps and for almost two years had no problems with early bedtimes. Jake is still taking a three hour afternoon nap, but his nights have gotten a bit rougher.
Toddler Bedtimes
I have the toddler bedtime facts according to my expert:
I work at home. Most of the time, I’m working full-time as a teacher, too. But I’ve elected to stay home for a year with my boys and hope and pray the budget can handle it.
Of course all moms work harder than anyone who is NOT a mom can ever realize, but in addition to that mommy work, I’m also working as a freelance writer.
I started writing a while ago to build up the business in anticipation of one day doing exactly what I am doing. I’m working at home with a toddler and an infant. So far, we’re doing okay.
Working at Home with a Toddler
Obviously, working at home with kids is not easy. I’ve learned a lot in my WAHM experience.
My thoughts on today:
Tomorrow might not be a better day, but it will at least be different. (I sincerely hope.)
That’s all I have to say about that.
As far as I’ve been able to discover, there is no temperature cut off for taking baby outside. That being said, I think every mom has strong feelings about the weather and her children. I live in coastal Texas and the sweltering heat starts up around March and doesn’t let up until after Halloween. As far as I’m concerned, most days are just too hot to take the baby outside.
Older children, like my toddler, can take the heat and keep on trucking. In fact, heat doesn’t seem to bother Jake at all unless the concrete burns his feet – yes, its been known to happen. Heat used to not bother me, but I swell so badly during pregnancy that the sticky Houston weather was too much for me and I haven’t built my immunity back up yet. Now, Baby Brian is only six weeks old and overheats in air conditioning wearing cotton pajamas
I enjoyed my last batch of tips so much I thought I’d do it again. Here are my 10 parenting tips for toddler tantrums.
1. Identify the cause. Is it fatigue or illness? Is he screaming about not getting a cookie? Did you take his cookie? (Understandable, but shame on you!)
Jake is two years old. Potty training toddler boys is notoriously difficult, so I’ve decided I’m not going to. I figure Jake will one day walk up to me and tell me that the other guys on the football team are making fun of his Pull-Ups and he’s ready to try making pee-pees in the potty. Hey, I’m a laid back mommy – kind of.
Not Potty Training
So, we may not actually be potty training at my house, but we are “laying a foundation.” That means that I’ve been working on the vocabulary for about a year now and we’re starting to do fun things like wear Big Boy Underpants and dump poo-poos out of the diaper into the potty so Jake can flush them down.
As much as it hurts sometimes, I’m a big fan of tough love. I’ve been using it for years in the classroom, and I’ve had to recently start it at home. God Bless Toddlers.
That being said, through the Fair Review Project, I recently “met” another working woman online who seems to specialize in tough love. Not only that, she “gets” toddlers. I love working online, especially in the webmaster community. There is so much to learn and so many interesting folks to meet.
Now, she’ll probably blow off my little post
My older child is a toddler. Fortunately, he’s become pretty easygoing - as toddler go. Despite his good nature, I was very concerned about how he’d adjust to the new baby. With the birth of my new son, I’ve pulled out every tool in my considerable arsenal to ensure he adjusts as well as possible to his new role – The Big Brother.
Helping
The easiest yet most difficult thing I’ve done to help Jake is allowing him to help me. Who cares if there is a small coating of powdered formula on the floor? The fact that Jake gets to pour the little scooper into the bottle and then shake it makes his little world right again. I’ll admit occasionally Baby Brian has to squirm and fuss while we wait on Jake to select the diaper with baby Elmo on it
Just remember, this too shall pass...
