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Tuesday, October 01, 2019

More Alexander Tales

I should be working on the Hancock Hummer (and in fact, have been working on it), but there's nothing like procrastinating another activity to get you to do other things that you should be doing.

...stuff like this (blogging is important, okay?).

I remembered the third Alexander story I meant to tell the other day. He has been working on opening doors and although he's not very good at it yet he can occasionally get them to pop open. It helps that all our doors are original-to-the-house, solid-core doors (ie: incredibly warped; none of them close very well at all). Anyway, on this particular morning the outside temperature was fairly cool so I had left the front door open (with the screen door closed) while I ran some trash out to the can.

Alexander was upset that he'd been left inside.

"Mommy—stay! Mommy—stay!" he cried.

"I'll be right back," I assured him.

He kept pleading with me to stay and was reaching up for the handle so he could open the door and follow me and, much to his surprise, he did it! He was so proud of (and surprised by) himself that he didn't even follow me outside. Instead he stood there dancing and squealing, "I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it!"


Andrew came to see what he had done.

"I did it, Daddy! I did it, Daddy! I did it—door!" Alexander chanted.

When I came back in the house it was, "I did it, Mommy! I did it—door—Mommy! I did it!"

Fortunately he hasn't managed yet to open the actual front door (he'd have to turn the handle to do that and that's tricky), but we know to keep an eye on him whenever we leave the door open.

He's an excellent cheerleader, though. He's my little shadow and is always around to watch me. He knows when I'm struggling and recognizes when I succeed.

So whenever I manage to unscrew that particularly difficult lid or back out of the garage or find that lost shoe, Alexander is there to celebrate with me.

"Yay! Did it—Mommy!" he'll cheer. "Did it!"

And it's really not half bad, having my own personal cheerleader.

*****

Alexander is still on the slow path to being potty trained. He's really good about it...until he's not. Frankly, we had been doing pretty well together, he and I, at getting to the potty and I thought for sure he'd be potty trained by his second birthday, but then I pulled the kids out to homeschool and potty training has become more of a back-burner project.

We haven't stopped, but I'm not pushing it, either.

There are times, however, when Alexander is really on the ball about telling us he needs to go potty. The first is during sacrament meeting. Oh, how that boy loves to go potty during sacrament meeting!

"Uh-oh! Need to go potty!" he'll whisper and lickety-split Andrew or I will cart him out of there.

He gets a nice little potty break and usually a drink from the fountain and it breaks the meeting up nicely. You don't have to be reverent during a potty break!

It's awesome—and he usually really does need to go—but he tends to abuse the system, sometimes asking to go potty three or four times within one hour (a bit extreme).

Another time he likes to abuse the magical phrase "Need to go potty!" is at bedtime.

Oh, boy!

I always sit him on the potty right before putting him to bed. But he'll never go. He'll wait until I think he's getting nice and cozy before tiptoeing up to me (I read in the hallway while the kids are falling asleep) and whispering, "Need to go potty!"

So I'll take him potty and he'll do the tiniest little bit and no matter how much I encourage him to finish the job he'll insist he's done so I'll put his diaper back on and wrestle him into his jammies and carry him back to bed and re-tuck him in and stroke his face and kiss him goodnight.

And two minutes later, there he'll be again: "Need to go potty!"

"If you want to be potty trained at bedtime you have to be potty trained during the daytime," I told him tonight when I mercilessly tucked him back into bed without taking him potty (a fourth time).

He was pretty upset by this power move (but did eventually settle down to sleep).

Probably what would help him the most is moving him out of diapers during the day but...I don't quite have enough ducks in a row for that yet (for example...where are the training pants I kept in reserve for him? And how am I to manage homeschooling and potty training?). We'll get there, though. I've been through this four times before.

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