Oh Yeah...It's Potty Time

Limelet has been peeing on the potty several times a day most days now and is usually dry overnight.  I was going to use that one-day method of potty training that uses positive reinforcement, but he's just grown into it himself before I got around to it.  The one thing I did do right was to scuttle his kid-potty and get a wide, stable footstool for use on the big-people potty.  He just did not want to use that little plastic one, especially since the potties at daycare are normal toilets (though a bit small).  He climbs right up and sits down.  It's very cute.  He even did a poop on the potty for Daddy last weekend, while I was napping.  Yay Limelet!

 

Basically, this means that when he ages out of diapers we'll be starting a whole new diaper cycle with the new one, for about a 6-year-long stint of diaper changing.

Beach

We finally got a chance to take Limelet to a beach over the weekend.  I found a state park that's about an hour away.  It's the first long-ish car trip he's been on in....I don't know; a really long time, anyway.  Well, Limelet absolutely loved the beach.  There was a thunderstorm in the afternoon, but at least we got in a good long morning of digging in the sand and paddling in the water.  He was really upset to leave, of course.  I can't wait to take him again.

 

Limelet is thriving in his new classroom.  He likes his teachers and talks to them spontaneously (I've seen it), and goes readily to them in the morning when I drop him off.  It's just a way better situation.  Limelet now discerns between cumulus and cirrus clouds (learned in daycare), and sings little songs that I have to look up online to figure out what they are. They have the same super-late, super-long naptime as the rest of the center (1-3pm), so he just doesn't go to sleep until 10pm.  It's ridiculous, I know.  But if we put him to bed earlier, he's awake from 2-5am, which is way worse.

 

When we were at the state park, there was a woman there with three children ranging in age from maybe 4 to 10.  We first started noticing her when her daughter was playing in the sand with Limelet.  They were happily pouring water into sandy holes near the water's edge, when the mother started closely directing into exactly which hole her daughter should pour the water, and in what manner.  "No, not that one--the other one.  No--inside the hole!"  Geez, I thought, here come anxiety disorders galore for this child.  Moments later, the mother started badgering her about how her tummy looked, and asking whether she had just eaten a lot of food or something.  I tell you, this kid was a skinny-to-normal four-year-old kid (and very cute).  The mother was quite heavy, so it was no leap of imagination to see her dumping her own anxieties all over the daughter.  Here comes the disordered eating, too, I mentally added. 

 

She continued to loudly harangue, micro-manage, and viciously nag her kids, especially singling out the daughter and one of the two boys for whatever reason.  (Nice vacation for them, huh?) This culminated shortly before we left, when she screamed at her son, who did not want to go near a busy nest of massive hornets at one end of the beach.  She wanted him to get something or cross that area for some reason; I don't know.  What she shrieked was "If you don't get over there right now I am going to pull down your pants and spank you in front of the entire beach for being a sissy about some bees!"  And then as an aside to me muttered that it was as if a monster was going to jump out of the beach and bite him.  Well, it was--it just wasn't the hornets.

 

I just don't get how someone can think that's even close to okay to say to their kids at ALL, let alone imagine that it's okay to scream it in public.  I know we all lose our tempers sometimes, but this wasn't losing her temper--this was hours of just miserable, wretched nagging.

Happy

Limelet is doing much, much better in his new class.  Several times now he has smiled as he waved bye-bye to me in the morning, which has never never happened before.  He does still cling to me and then to Mr. Luke (usually) or Ms. Sarah (sometimes) when I hand him over.  But he seems much happier.  He's also started interacting with other kids in public (like at the park) a lot more.

 

This morning when I dropped him at daycare, the class was outside in the little playground area, and some of the children were playing with a big plastic baseball and bat.  Instead of clinging to me as usual, he said, "They're playing baseball.  I want to play baseball!"  And he actually wriggled out of my arms and ran off with barely a goodbye.  This would have been unimaginable even a month or so ago. I'm so relieved.

 

Over the weekend we visited a new park and Limelet played with a little boy who was perhaps a year older.  Now in the way of most older children, this other boy was bossing Limelet around, which Limelet was mostly ignoring.  The other boy showed him a pile of wood chips that he was using to "make a pizza," and Limelet obliviously pushed the entire pile off the little ledge onto the ground.  The other boy got upset.  Not terribly, but in the way of "hey, you're ruining it!"  I translated to Limelet that the older boy was trying to make a stick pizza, and suggested that he help him get some more sticks.  Limelet became concerned that the other boy was upset.  "Oh, okay, I'm sorry.  Are you alright?" he asked, solicitously tilting his head.  It was really cute.  I'm happy he can apologize and make amends already, because that's a difficult skill that a lot of adults still lack.  (I attribute this to our willingness to apologize to him ourselves, instead of pretending we didn't do something or insisting we were right when we obviously weren't.) 

 

He still phrases some things awkwardly, and some phrases have even become ingrained family slang, such as "You want no?"  Meaning, "I don't want this."  But he's moving a lot more towards proper pronouns.