Good Day/Bad Day

Today was both a great day, and a not-so-great day. D seemed to have woken up on the wrong side of the crib, and has remained kinda cranky all day long. It didn't help that at snack time this morning he managed to PUSH HIS HIGH CHAIR BACK ONTO THE FLOOR. Yes, while still sitting on it. Luckily he was ok 5 minutes later, back to playing and babbling as usual, but hoooly cow. He had another couple semi-nasty falls today, but he always returned to normal after a few minutes of crying so I figure he's ok. Thank God for thick skulls.

We did meet up with a couple friends at a park today, including Monika and her daughter Audrey (6 months older than D), and Eugenia who's an old friend I haven't seen since before we moved to Switzerland. It was tough to truly catch up since every time we started talking D would run off, but hopefully we'll get together again soon and be able to talk more calmly.

D and I spent a bit of time playing outside in the late afternoon, and as I watched him walking everywhere holding various toys I realized that I haven't seen him crawl hardly at all the past few days. He's been walking tons, but up till recently if he fell he'd continue on on all fours. Now, he takes the time to get back up on his feet. Very cool. =)

About a week or 2 ago I pick up Diaper-Free Before Three again and started thinking again about trying to potty train D. I like the approach of the book, which seems pretty casual, laid-back, and open to following the needs of the child. The books lists 3 steps/phases for potty training: 1) get a potty and allow the child to become familiar with it, letting them sit in it for a few minutes at a time or whatever they feel comfortable doing, 2) start putting the child on the potty on a sort of schedule throughout the day (before/after naps, after meals, about every 2 hours...). When the child seems to be "getting it" and actually going on the potty some of the time, put them in cotton pants at least part-time to help the process, and 3) maintaining good habits (go to the potty regularly throughout the day, not waiting for child to "need to go").

I went ahead and got a potty chair, curious to see what D would think of it. I tried sitting him on it before his bath a few times, but he wasn't at all interested. Then one day I was in the bathroom and D came in with me as he often does and I thought to sit him down (pants on) and he actually liked it. Like, a lot. He kept sitting, then standing, then sitting on it again. Very cute. Since then I've sat him on it a couple more times and he's seemed cool with it, and then tonight Zach was getting D's bath ready and shouted out to me that D was trying to sit on the potty all on his own, no prompting. Then he stood back up, started playing with the potty chair... and peed on the bath mat! lol

I have no idea how quickly we may or may not progress with this-- I'm certainly not going to push this very hard, and will just follow his lead on how interested he is. I am intrigued by the fact that up till a few decades ago most children in the US were fully potty-trained by 18months-2 years of age. I'm thinking that maybe in the summer when it's warm, if he seems ready for it, we might try going with cotton pants/pantsless for part of the day while we're at home. I'm in no particular rush to do this before he's 2, but if I wait till February it'll be too cold to let him go unclothed at home (we have a decent heater, but this house has incredibly crappy insulation so still gets quite cold). So, we'll see. It's an adventure with no set timeline.