Another for my Father Of The Year file.
A few set up points to begin this story.
First, C. has lost all interest in potty training over the past month. She had been using the toilet once a day or so but lately not at all.
Second, L. woke up around 5:30 Thursday morning, and after a bottle and diaper change was wide-awake and ready to play rather than ready to go back to sleep for a couple more hours.
So, the remainder of Thursday involved me attempting to keep M. and C. in one part of the house while I worked to get L. to nap in another part. After a couple 20-30 minute mini-naps, L. finally conked out on my around 1:00 pm. She ended up sleeping on me for a little over an hour while the big sisters, I thought, played nicely in the front room. At some point C. went running into the laundry room. These days that often means that she is going to close the door behind her and load up her diaper. This time, though, I heard her throw something in the wastebasket and then run back out to where she and M. were playing.
I thought that was a little odd, but didn’t think it was worth waking the baby up to investigate.
A few minutes later, I heard C. crying. Usually that means M.’s messing with her in some way, but I didn’t hear M.. Also, C. usually comes in to where I am if she starts crying, but she remained out of the room. The crying ended soon enough, so again I chose to stick to the couch with the baby.
Sometime after 2:00 L. woke up and I walked around to see what had been going on. M. was playing nicely in the entryway building things with Legos. I looked into the bathroom and found C. sitting on her potty. Completely naked. Shivering and crying.
Turns out she decided to unilaterally get back on the potty training bandwagon. She stripped down (why she had to take all her clothes off I don’t know), removed her pull-up (which was what she had run into the laundry room and thrown away), and sat down and peed. Then, she sat and waited for at least 30 minutes for someone to come wipe her and put clothes back on her. Making the picture perfect were her little dress-up princess high heels that were placed right next to her.
I wiped her, got her some warm clothes, and complimented her profusely for using the potty like a big girl. I also let her and M. both know that it was ok to come tell me they needed to use the potty if the baby was sleeping, as long as they did it quietly.
In the end C. was very happy. She got lots of hugs and kisses, another sticker on her potty chart, and after dinner we went out and got milkshakes. I just hope the 30 minutes of cold and confusion hasn’t pushed back the potty training window even further.
Postscript: That was Thursday. C. hasn’t gone near a potty since then. She did go into the bathroom at Panera tonight when S. took M., but when I asked her if she went too, she just said, “Dere’s a changing table to change babies’ diapers in dere.”