Being the Bowens: Potty and Papa

A couple of weeks ago I got freaked out because I heard that if you're baby is showing interest in using the potty, and you don't channel that interest into hardcore potty training, you've lost your "window of opportunity" until they're like twelve years old (or something like that). So, since Rory's been using her potty (all on her own terms) for the last few months, I determined that we'd better take it from a novel play experience to a nonnegotiable fact of life right away.

After a tiny bit of research, I decided to try a three day potty crash course, which we approached with a healthy dose of skepticism. It basically entailed staying home for basically three full days, with Rory running around nudi-buns. I'd offer her the potty every fifteen minutes or so, and if she went, she got a joyous potty song and dance and some cereal-piece "incentives." If she pee-peed on the floor, we were supposed to act morose and express sadly, "Pee pee goes in the potty, not on the floor."

We were cautiously optimistic after day one, when she maybe had 7-8 accidents and lots of success. But day two was a nightmare (she had to poop that day, which always results in drama of some sort). I thought maybe we would give up, but we persevered through day three, when she surprised us by only having one accident all day! We celebrated by going undies shopping (we played up how exciting undies were), and she didn't have any potty "issues" on her first diaper-free outing! Ever since then, she's been great! We have the occasional slip up, usually when she's engrossed in some other activity and doesn't want to leave it. We still remind her to go, but she can handle her undies on her own. We're not even close, however, to being nighttime potty trained; that girl sleeps so soundly that I don't think she even has a clue that she needs to pee. We'll get there one day; we're happy with diaper-free days for now!

We celebrated Flag Day with a red, white, and blue finger foods picnic! We ate air pop popcorn, blue corn chips and salsa, hard boiled eggs, berries, and little peperoni-jack cheese skewers. And strawberry slushies to drink! And cherry-vanilla ice cream

Blake tried to convince Bash to eat a raspberry, but he was much more intrigued by the chips.

Fake smile

This boy LOVES to bounce!

So much so that he's been known to fall asleep in his bouncer :)

We made a fort and all slept in it Saturday night when Blake ended up not having to work. We also watched a crazy Thai martial arts movie that was surprisingly entertaining. And had big bowls of leftover patriotic ice cream.