Wednesday
Apr142010
Dear Kaylee, at 35 months
Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 07:00AM
Dear Kaylee,
I’m going to start this letter with an apology: I’m sorry to have made your life more difficult in the last couple of days, but you’ve handled it like a champ. (I’m also sorry that poop is going to feature so heavily in this letter.) See, two days ago I banned diapers from your life. You were not especially amused. We’ve been working on this potty training thing for more than a year, and you’ve done so well. You never have accidents and you’re more than willing to drop everything and go have a pee … but you wouldn’t use the potty for number two. Instead, you were demanding a diaper, which meant that (1) you were never pooping in the potty, and (2) I was having to wipe your ass more often than I really wanted to. (Except sometimes, completely randomly, you would decide to poop in the potty and I’d think we’d made a breakthrough. And then you’d go right back to refusing.) So lately, I’ve been trying to come up with new strategies to entice you to use the potty more often. I’ve heard that rewards work for other people’s kids, and so I started offering you one M&M for peeing in the potty and two M&Ms for pooping in the potty. You were unimpressed. So we moved up to miniature cupcakes as a reward for pooping. You thought it was a great idea, in theory, but whenever the time came to earn a cupcake, you always decided you could live without.
And so it was time to get drastic. Over the weekend, I told you over and over that the diapers would be gone on Monday. When I quizzed you by asking, “What happens on Monday?”, you’d answer “No more diapers!” But when Monday came, you were a bit dismayed to find out I’d been serious. When you had to poop, you once again asked for a diaper, and you didn’t believe me when I said they were gone. “Let’s go check!” you said, running up the stairs to your room and finding that I was not, in fact, lying to you. Rather than throwing the screaming fit I was expecting, you just resigned yourself to the fact that you were going to have to be a big girl now, and you earned yourself a cupcake. I am so proud of you for handling it so well.
Unfortunately, because I’ve banned diapers during the day, I’ve had to ban them at night, too. If I give you even the slightest hint that I’ve only hidden the diapers away in my closet, I’ll be in for a major battle. So if I offer you a diaper at night so you don’t pee all over your bed, then this whole sudden-death potty training thing will fail. And so, you’re now wearing underwear to bed at night, too. So far it’s been a laundry-inducing experience. But we’re going to keep it up, and I’m hoping we’ll be (more or less) past the bed-wetting stage in the coming weeks. I really hope so, because you sleep in my bed a lot.
Potty training is just one of the many ways you’re seeming so big these days. You’ve started joking around with us, saying absurd things and then declaring, “It was just a joke!” with a big grin on your face. You get melodramatic sometimes – something you picked up from your cousin Hope – and cry, “We’re never, ever going to go to Gram and Papa’s house!” And several times a week you’ll use a word that I didn’t even know you knew, and you’ll use it in the correct context. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of your face from a certain angle and I see that your baby fat is melting away, and the face of a beautiful little girl is emerging, and I wonder how I got so lucky as to have you in my life.
We joined a gym this month, and at first I was worried about how you’d react to being dropped off there with a bunch of kids you don’t know. As I mentioned, you can be dramatic sometimes, and I didn’t know if you’d lay on a guilt trip or just go with the flow. Thankfully, you love it. Every single time I pick you up after a leaving you at the gym daycare for a while, you say, “Hi Mommy, that was fun!” and then you regale me with stories of what you did while I was gone. Today’s activities had something to do with yelling “Choo, choo!” and making ice cream cones out of blocks. I don’t really understand what that means, but I’m more than happy to listen to you talk about it.
There’s only one month left until you hit three years old. I don’t think I get to call you a toddler anymore – in fact, I probably should have stopped that by now. You’ll be old enough to play with the big kids at the gym, old enough to start preschool in the fall (assuming your mother gets around to researching that), and past the age where we can get you free meals at Country Buffet and free admission to zoos and museums. There’s a movie called “Dan In Real Life,” in which Steve Carrel’s character points at his young daughter and says, “You. Stop growing.” Your dad and I have had so many of those moments in the past couple of months, where it seems like you’re getting big much too quickly. It’s like someone hit the fast-forward button, and tomorrow we’ll be arguing over whether or not your slacker boyfriend is good enough for you. I feel like this ride we’re on is speeding up, when all I really want is to slow it down and make sure we eke out every bit of fun possible before we hit the teenage years and you start hating me. But regardless of how fast it goes, I’m so glad to be on this ride with you.
Love,
Mommy
I’m going to start this letter with an apology: I’m sorry to have made your life more difficult in the last couple of days, but you’ve handled it like a champ. (I’m also sorry that poop is going to feature so heavily in this letter.) See, two days ago I banned diapers from your life. You were not especially amused. We’ve been working on this potty training thing for more than a year, and you’ve done so well. You never have accidents and you’re more than willing to drop everything and go have a pee … but you wouldn’t use the potty for number two. Instead, you were demanding a diaper, which meant that (1) you were never pooping in the potty, and (2) I was having to wipe your ass more often than I really wanted to. (Except sometimes, completely randomly, you would decide to poop in the potty and I’d think we’d made a breakthrough. And then you’d go right back to refusing.) So lately, I’ve been trying to come up with new strategies to entice you to use the potty more often. I’ve heard that rewards work for other people’s kids, and so I started offering you one M&M for peeing in the potty and two M&Ms for pooping in the potty. You were unimpressed. So we moved up to miniature cupcakes as a reward for pooping. You thought it was a great idea, in theory, but whenever the time came to earn a cupcake, you always decided you could live without.
And so it was time to get drastic. Over the weekend, I told you over and over that the diapers would be gone on Monday. When I quizzed you by asking, “What happens on Monday?”, you’d answer “No more diapers!” But when Monday came, you were a bit dismayed to find out I’d been serious. When you had to poop, you once again asked for a diaper, and you didn’t believe me when I said they were gone. “Let’s go check!” you said, running up the stairs to your room and finding that I was not, in fact, lying to you. Rather than throwing the screaming fit I was expecting, you just resigned yourself to the fact that you were going to have to be a big girl now, and you earned yourself a cupcake. I am so proud of you for handling it so well.
Unfortunately, because I’ve banned diapers during the day, I’ve had to ban them at night, too. If I give you even the slightest hint that I’ve only hidden the diapers away in my closet, I’ll be in for a major battle. So if I offer you a diaper at night so you don’t pee all over your bed, then this whole sudden-death potty training thing will fail. And so, you’re now wearing underwear to bed at night, too. So far it’s been a laundry-inducing experience. But we’re going to keep it up, and I’m hoping we’ll be (more or less) past the bed-wetting stage in the coming weeks. I really hope so, because you sleep in my bed a lot.
Potty training is just one of the many ways you’re seeming so big these days. You’ve started joking around with us, saying absurd things and then declaring, “It was just a joke!” with a big grin on your face. You get melodramatic sometimes – something you picked up from your cousin Hope – and cry, “We’re never, ever going to go to Gram and Papa’s house!” And several times a week you’ll use a word that I didn’t even know you knew, and you’ll use it in the correct context. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of your face from a certain angle and I see that your baby fat is melting away, and the face of a beautiful little girl is emerging, and I wonder how I got so lucky as to have you in my life.
We joined a gym this month, and at first I was worried about how you’d react to being dropped off there with a bunch of kids you don’t know. As I mentioned, you can be dramatic sometimes, and I didn’t know if you’d lay on a guilt trip or just go with the flow. Thankfully, you love it. Every single time I pick you up after a leaving you at the gym daycare for a while, you say, “Hi Mommy, that was fun!” and then you regale me with stories of what you did while I was gone. Today’s activities had something to do with yelling “Choo, choo!” and making ice cream cones out of blocks. I don’t really understand what that means, but I’m more than happy to listen to you talk about it.
There’s only one month left until you hit three years old. I don’t think I get to call you a toddler anymore – in fact, I probably should have stopped that by now. You’ll be old enough to play with the big kids at the gym, old enough to start preschool in the fall (assuming your mother gets around to researching that), and past the age where we can get you free meals at Country Buffet and free admission to zoos and museums. There’s a movie called “Dan In Real Life,” in which Steve Carrel’s character points at his young daughter and says, “You. Stop growing.” Your dad and I have had so many of those moments in the past couple of months, where it seems like you’re getting big much too quickly. It’s like someone hit the fast-forward button, and tomorrow we’ll be arguing over whether or not your slacker boyfriend is good enough for you. I feel like this ride we’re on is speeding up, when all I really want is to slow it down and make sure we eke out every bit of fun possible before we hit the teenage years and you start hating me. But regardless of how fast it goes, I’m so glad to be on this ride with you.
Love,
Mommy
Reader Comments (1)
(I think Dan in Real Life was severely underrated. I liked that movie.)
Hey, having a kid completely potty trained before her third birthday is a pretty awesome thing. I don't envy you the laundry, but she's doing so good. Go, Kaylee!