Days 15, 16 and 17 Thursday March 10th to Sat March 12th
Katie seems to be on a bit of a "potty strike" I don't seem to be reading her cues and we're missing TONS of pees and poops. I'm out of sync with her. but it's probably one of two reasons. Either because she's entering a new phase where she's constantly standing/climbing on things, or because Elijah has been home. Although we've taking a few steps backwards during the day, We seem to be going forwards at night. Last night Katie went to bed early ( just after six) and woke up to feed again just after nine. When i took her diaper off, to my surprise it was dry! and she went for a nice long pee in the bucket. Once more that night she woke with a dry diaper. I was very pleased, Although she refused to pee before that feed and I ended up getting peed on because the cloth I had her on didn't absorb all of it.
Aside from that, we now have six pairs of undies finished and Katie has learned the ASL for milk. Now if she would just learn the potty sign instead of asking for milk whenever she wants something. when she wants to be picked up or wants you near for some reason, she seems to be signaling milk with both hands, which is very similar to how we signal for her to come to us. She picked these up in the last 3+ weeks, so i'm very hopeful that the potty signal will come within a month and that she'll have better control of her hands to show the difference between "milk" and "come here". All in all, life with a diaper free baby is going well, I just wish we had started form birth. It also helps that Elijah is now backing me up 100% on this crazy adventure and doesn't want me to quit! I love my hubby!
Day 18 Sunday March 13th 2010
Now that I've read most of Ingrid Bauer's "Diaper Free", I have a renewed outlook on what we're doing and why we're doing it. I'm more than okay with all the misses we've had lately and I'm going to try my best to communicate better with Katie and get to the root of this "potty strike". Today brought on a new round of misses and frustrations, but now I know to just laugh it off and move on. We went for a walk through the neighborhood in the afternoon and for a quick visit to the Merner household. This was our first diaper free outing. Once we arrived at Vic's, I offered Katie a pee and wasn't frustrated or surprised when she clearly signaled "no". so we continued on as we had been doing, and made our way home, still dry :) . While I was at hockey, Elijah had three successes in a row, the first two weren't protested at all which is very promising. when i got home, I was feeling refreshed from being able to release my stored up energy and was able to successfully pee Katie with no complaints. After being put to bed sans diaper again, Katie stayed dry for roughly three hours before waking to feed, where I picked her up and figured out a way I could hold her over the bucket while feeding her. Elijah brought us a bottle and Katie fed without completely waking, peeing halfway through. She didn't cry once during this whole process. Here's hoping we can continue to have successes and continue to build on our lost communication of her elimination needs.
