10 days later….I am happy to report….(drumroll please!)…THANE IS POTTY TRAINED!

Oh, I am sorry, I mean TOILET TRAINED. That’s what Montessori says. We now have to add words like toilet, BM, and urinate to our vocabulary.

(Some of this is a repeat but hey, it’s background!) So two weekends ago I stayed home all weekend. Not kidding. All weekend. I bought $100 worth of underwear of various kinds (Elmo, Thomas, white cotton padded) and every size 2T pair of shorts I could find. I was ready to go.

We got home Friday night and I set the stove timer to 15 minutes. When it dinged, I took him to the toilet. Most of the times he went. Then I reset the timer and we started again. We had 4 accidents that first afternoon and he slept in a diaper that night.

Saturday we had 2 BM accidents and to urinate accidents.

Sunday we had no accidents until 3:30 pm. Then mommy went to the craft fair and we had 3 accidents in 3 hours. Not a shining success.

I went to KC the next day and stayed for 3 days. Thane did great (oh, yeah, daddy did too!)! Accidents were maybe 1-2 per day.

On Thursday night we decided to ditch the night time diaper. We have now donated all diapers to school and there are now no diapers for Thane at home. For the last 4 days at school (and at home longer) he has not had a single accident.

I think we have already saved more than $50 on diapers. Thane is so proud of himself. He definitely feels like a big kid at school and loves going to new restrooms at restaurants and when we are out shopping. Going out has not been that challenging either, although our first car trip should be interesting. He does know to hold it and tells us for the most part, so we might fare okay.

He has also started taking one of his three teddy bears to sit on the potty with him. Too cute.

Mara got 2 teeth this week and they are mighty sharp! She is getting more and more interested in food and tries to grab for ours on numerous occasions. Yesterday I caught Thane feeding her peanut butter (yes, I said peanut butter) and I just about had a heart attack. She apparently did not swallow any and there were no allergic reactions but I watched her like a hawk the rest of the afternoon.

The teething is not so bad but she has definitely been crankier and gassier (I don’t know if those are related or if it is just her eating more baby food). I also think she is getting a slew of teeth in all at once. Who knows, by her first birthday she may have more teeth than her big brother!

Mara is also getting closer to being mobile. She is scooting backwards and rolling all around. I am still at the stage where I am encouraging her on to move but the day she starts actually moving, I know I will be faced with a whole new set of challenges.

We bought a new camera last week, a Nikon D300, hopefully we will see some great new pics from it.

Thane is still having the “night terrors” and is sleeping with us many nights. We went to the doctor today for some advice and will see how that helps.

At almost 7 months old, Mara is finally getting used to the idea of solid food. We started her at around 5ish months but she did not really take to it. She continued with that phase of thrushing the food back out of her mouth each time we spoon fed her. It was not that she seemed to not like the food or the taste, just that she could not figure out that it was actually food. Because of this, I eased off on the amount of food we would give her, a wait and see approach.

I was worried that this approach would make her less likely to eat when we tried again later. It does seem to have worked because now she is doing great with it. We are still on the Stage 1s, but I think we will move to the Stage 2s soon now that I see her interest is raised.

Thane has also been very interested in Mara eating. Whenever we give her a bottle he says: “Mara drinks milk.” When we feed her, he watches intently. This weekend, in his cute little underoos, he decided to help us out even more and actually feed Mara. I was amazed at how gentle he was with the spoon (i.e. not gagging her with it) and how precise he was at getting food on the spoon and feeding her. She loved being fed by her big brother, her best friend.

Thane feeding Mara from Stephanie Hansen on Vimeo.

I like to think that this weekend was a resounding success but since I have not yet heard from his teacher, I cannot yet say. What I can say is that on Friday (evening only) we had 4 accidents. On Saturday, we had 3 and a half (half being that it was completed in the potty) and as of Sunday at 3:30 pm, there were ZERO accidents. Then from 3:30-7 we had 3 accidents. This was also the time that I chose to go do errands..coincidence? God, I hope so because if I am his Skinner box for peeing, that is a bad bad thing. He also napped both days with no accident (and no diaper).

Here is what we did.

First, I spent WAY too much money at Target buying extra shorts and several different types of underwear/training pants to see what worked and what did not work. I am happy to report that I was able to return the things that did not work already. He absolutely loves the Elmo underwear. Tagless. Not made in China. Sesame Street approved. I guess Jay and I can make this one character exception for no more diapers.

I set the timer for 15 mins and took or asked or some combination of the two each time. As I said before, Sunday was a huge success. I don’t know if I just caught him at the right time or what but it was working. He was sent to school today diaper free and I cannot be more excited.

This weekend Mara did not get quite so much attention but Thane got a ton of mommy time. I cannot remember the last time I did something with so much concentration and effort for more than 12 hours.

In Mara news…SHE WAVED! It was the cutest thing ever and she did it repeatedly. It was kind of a backwards wave with her arm up and her hand out but it was adorable.

In Thane-ism news….we were watching a Discovery Channel show the other day and Thane looked at the screen and said, “They’re in space.” Jay and I looked at each other perplexed. Where did this kid learn about space? He was right, they were in space. Break out the astronaut toys!!!