Over the past couple of months we have watched our little Gator blossom into a sweet and loving little toddler, who wants to be just like his big brother. He wants to ride his big brother's bike, sleep in his big brother's bunk bed, and now try to use the potty like his big brother. So, one thing at a time.
We still do not let Monk sleep on the top bunk bed. This is a safety concern for us, of course we don't want him falling out, even though there is a rail, but more or less let's just say...we are not the best waking family on the planet. Meaning it takes all of us a good 20 minutes before we can function to even hear what is going on around us! That being said, when he wakes up at night to go potty, we need him to be able to function to get to the ladder and climb down, understanding that he can't just swing his legs over and sleep walk to the toilet. Reality: We still have the ladder hidden away!
So how does this fair for our Gator? Well, he saw all the hype that Monk displayed over his getting bunk beds.
Confession: We have had the bunk beds all along, we just never put the top bunk on until we moved and didn't have the space to store the pieces for the top.
Gator sees Monk in his new bed and wants to get in EVERY night. So he learned to hoist his little short heiny over the top of his crib. Yes, he fell out once, then tried multiple times again and one of those times he lodged himself between the wall and the crib rail. Yes, I stopped got out my phone to take a picture of this adventure. I know horrible mama not immediately coming to his rescue.
We still do not let Monk sleep on the top bunk bed. This is a safety concern for us, of course we don't want him falling out, even though there is a rail, but more or less let's just say...we are not the best waking family on the planet. Meaning it takes all of us a good 20 minutes before we can function to even hear what is going on around us! That being said, when he wakes up at night to go potty, we need him to be able to function to get to the ladder and climb down, understanding that he can't just swing his legs over and sleep walk to the toilet. Reality: We still have the ladder hidden away!
So how does this fair for our Gator? Well, he saw all the hype that Monk displayed over his getting bunk beds.
Confession: We have had the bunk beds all along, we just never put the top bunk on until we moved and didn't have the space to store the pieces for the top.
Gator sees Monk in his new bed and wants to get in EVERY night. So he learned to hoist his little short heiny over the top of his crib. Yes, he fell out once, then tried multiple times again and one of those times he lodged himself between the wall and the crib rail. Yes, I stopped got out my phone to take a picture of this adventure. I know horrible mama not immediately coming to his rescue.
But the moral of my bed story is a 20 month old being able to climb out of bed every night is just not a good thing. We as parents know this and we also know that he just isn't ready for a big boy toddler bed yet and neither are we. Finally, just before he turned 21 months we got up the mustard to do it. Better to attempt to transition him, than him fall out break a bone or knock his pearly whites out.
He is in love with the fact that he can get in and out of his bed on his own, but has absolutely no desire to actually sleep in it open. What is a parent to do? We tried for an hour and a half every night to get him to lay down and fall asleep. We even sent Monk out of the room and well that didn't work. We pretty much tried everything and got no where, then we turned the "bed" backwards against the wall! As you can see the sides of the crib are slanted so there is no hoisting capability, and he sleeps and so do the rest of us.
So on to my parenting failure...
Our big boy, who isn't ready for a big boy bed yet, has decided that his new favorite word is POTTY. Everyone in the house goes potty in the toilet and well the other night he wanted to too. After putting him to bed, he started saying "POTTY, POTTY". What's a Parent to do? Picture this... Mr. BBH grabs him out of the crib, hands him over, goes running into our bathroom to get a toddler toilet ring that just never made it into a box when we moved, as I am ripping his footed jammies off and pulling his diaper off and then hoist this little barely 3 foot mini human onto the toilet where his legs barely hang over the edge. Then he is very uneasy on the toilet ring, why? He has a big booty and well the little potette ring just wasn't big enough. Well nothing happened but a battle of the wills. Gator swiftly trying to out smart BBH reaches for the flusher knob and woosh. Then again, but blocked by Mr. BBH. Now, the game has begun.
We bought him some of his own Big Boy undies and let him try them out. He is very proud of his undies! I know blurry picture but the expression says it all!
So last night Mr. BBH, not wanting to have a toilet battle of the flushing wills take two, climbed up into the attic and searched for the box of Potties, since "Potty, Potty" came out at dinner time. We put him in his big boy undies and over to the potty he went. Nothing again, but hey it's a start. Not thinking Gator was still in just undies, the kids ran down stairs to the playroom to play for a bit before bed. Well, we called them up 10 minutes later and he was wet. Ok, so he just peed. No big deal. Upstairs to get ready for bed and clean jammies on. "Potty, Potty". This time, we put him in washable trainers and a vinyl cover, had a little potty in the bathroom, but footie jammies. Nothing happened in the potty, but his trainers were wet. We got him cleaned up, put a new pair of trainers on and vinyl again and off to lala dream land he went. Or so we thought.
At 4 am. He woke up screaming. Now, not being those waking parents, Mr. BBH finally heard him and went in. I have been under the weather and well comatose at night. Finally 20 minutes later, Mr. BBH comes in and wakes me up, he can't figure out what is wrong and needs to go back to sleep. I go in. I reach into the mock crib for him, and he is soaked. Vinyl pants, you suck is all I thought. My poor little Gator, was freezing. So I call for Mr. BBH, "I need some help, I need a dipe!" We had pee, we had poop, we had a frozen little big boy that didn't want to take off his big boy undies and a wet bed. As I was ripping everything off, Mr. BBH felt horrible. "I asked him, I did, I checked to see if he was wet, he wasn't, I asked him if his teeth hurt and he said NO!" The Gator was just embarrassed he had an accident. Everything was alright we reminded him. We got him cleaned up and he was still hysterical. Mr. BBH took him back to our bed while I cleaned everything up.
So much for our Big Boy, who needs a toddler bed... who just doesn't want one, and neither do we, but wants to potty train instead. What is a parent to do? Fail. Yep. We failed on our first go round of the big boy bed...our first potty training go round, by doing it at night. Hopefully, this doesn't deter him, but we are going to hit this full speed ahead this weekend and see where it lands us. We know better, I know better, but I wanted to let my child take the lead on this. So it's a dreary Wednesday and sleep deprived parents, our poor children who are all geared up for an awesome day are going to have to witness totally caffeinated struggling parents!
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