Potty Training

My son is 15 months old. A bit early for potty training but I've decided to give it a go.
Why? you may ask. Why try so early? The average according to the doctor is girls potty train at 1 1/2 - 2 years and boys  train at 2-2 1/2 years on average.
However I get so sick of hearing my mothers generation with their...my child was potty trained by the time they could walk .. stories. It really gets under my skin. However, in many cases I think kids may have been left to long to be potty trained and could have been done much earlier.
So who is right?

There is this thing called "conditioning". If you've ever been in a classroom and the teacher turns off the lights and all the kids go silent, you can tell right then that they have been "conditioned" to be silent when the lights are off.
There is a man named Pavlov who had a dog who conditioned his dog to drool whenever he rang a bell. First he fed the dog. Then the next day he fed it and rang a bell just before he fed the dog (while it drooled for its food). Then he rang the bell while holding the food dish which made the dog drool. And lastly he just rang the bell and the dog would drool.
Many of us are conditioned to various things throughout our day.

So under this respect we condition our children to go to the potty. They sense their body's reaction to a bodily function. We set them on a potty. We do this over and over again and sooner or later they go to the potty when they feel that reaction.

Is my child of age. ?
I think so personally. I recently noticed with the change to a toddler bed that he's been conditioned to stay in bed until I come get him. This is still in testing as its a new thing. But he is able to be conditioned.

So the experiment starts....

Day one. He pee'd every 5 minutes. Totally facinated by the fact that he was peeing and often squatted for the momentous occasion.
I on the other hand didn't know he could pee that much. Threw out the "peeing scheduel" and watched for signs of peeing upcoming. At one point I even grabbed a kitchen pot to catch it because I wasn't quick enough to get him on the potty.
Another problem I've noticed is his feet don't totally touch the floor when he's on the potty.Only his tip toes. So it makes it uncomfortable for him. 

I have him in cloth diapers to aid in him realizing when he's wet and help me too.
So far. 3 hours and I'm pooped with having a naked baby running around and put on the cloth diaper again. Several floor waterings later.

I'll try to update this daily or by-daily as the saga develops or until I give up.

Ohh the Mall!

The Mall! My husband and I had our romantic weekend away at Morning Glory bed and breakfast near Cambridge. Awesome place. While there we went to the movie theater that was in the mall.
In a stixs kinda way I found myself gasping as I went into "the mall". All the stores and all in one place. Ha, like I've never been there before. But lets just say its been a long while since I've perused "the mall".

So we went and got our tickets to the movie "Red" (very funny by the way) and decided to mosie around and take a gander at it all. There was bath and perfume, bags,clothes,food,an ice rink (very cool) and at last...the kids stores.

The cool thing of having a kid is it allows you into places like this. Places that even if you don't have him with you you can say things like "oh our son would like this". Or at this stage I look the part with my prego belly out front.
Otherwise your just some creepy person in a kids store.
There was Children's Place, that I've never been in but got a ball cap for caleb and if we had a girl would be walking out with the super cute tu-tu's they had their. And then their was a whole store of TOYS! yes TOYS!, people! Do you remember the last time you were excited about a toy store? Like when you were young in the backseat of your parents car and you saw....bum-bum-baaaa....Toy's R Us. Its like the heaven of toy lands!
Well there was a much smaller version in the mall. And we had a blast in there...even with out our son with us:)

In the end we left with a ball cap, some sea monkeys and a movie. Oh and a spritz of perfume. Otherwise, for all the hype, I left feeling that I didn't need half the stuff in that place.

At the top of his lungs.

Going through the shopping store the other day I was introduced to my 14 month son's new volume level. With no exact words to say he decided to exclaim his joy for life in a loud shreak that lasted a good 30 sec. And then again and again. Over and over he continued.
It didn't help that I was now behind some shelves at the back corner of the large dept. style store so it may have appeared to anyone like I was hiding in a corner while the sounds that were made were that of a beaten child. 
Again and again he decided to make his presence known by belting out in full form his new found level of noise. There was no covering of mouth or shushhing that would relate my distaste for his screams. 
But the louder he got the more he smiled. 


Part of me thought. Great, he's amused and not pulling stuff off the shelves. The other part though, yes, that's my personality coming out for sure.


I've never had to leave a store because my child was happy. However, in light of the fact that the happier he got the more boisterous he got. We had to quickly make our selections and move towards the till, where we were met in line with a quiet looking,kind mennonite woman. She looked at my boy thoughtfully and tenderly. In such a way that a woman who has children of her own may look at another. 
My boy stared back at her and then blasted out his best yell yet. With a big smile he seemed pleased and the poor woman was dismayed. 
I don't know if they promote or shame such behaviour in her home but at my its considered a phase that only some secure duct tape could cure at this point. 
As we moved to the till and out the door he settled down and that was all he had to say. I realized then that my son was a show boat. Loving the attention of others at whatever volume level it took. 


Later we went to the park. Out in the fresh open air where children often make plenty of noise naturally, and where he didn't feel the need to barley let out a peep.