Spreading the word on infant potty training

After I had that negative experience at a friend's house with early start potty training, I have decided that I would make people more aware of toilet training early.  So I openly tell people that I am potty training my child despite the fact he is only 6 months old.

I liken it to toilet training a puppy.  Because if you can teach a dog surely you can teach a baby!  Babies are smart little things, they like routines and they recognise familiar objects.  If the baby can recognise a milk bottle means food time, a car seat means car ride time, or seeing a bath and knowing it's bath time then surely they can recognise that a potty/toilet means poopoo weewee time!

And it seems like extra work when you have to break the habit of the child who is used to pooing and weeing in their nappy.  And if you try to introduce them to the potty at that terrible two age when they are busy asserting themselves and everything is "no" then it just seems like a daunting task.  I think I did the right thing by introducing him to the potty at the early stage so he's not afraid of it and even enjoys it because it means mummy is going to play with him!

I've read that the best time to introduce it is betweeen 4-6 months of age.  And that there is a window of opportunity before they start refusing to try new things.  And there used to be people saying that there is psychological trauma from trying to potty train too early so that's why you have to wait till they're ready... but I don't like that approach.  If we waited for our kids to be ready to eat their vegetables, go to bed early, learn manners then we'd end up with children with no boundaries and a bit wild!  Hence we teach them to like eating vegies early, we train them to go to bed early... I wonder why the resistance to potty training?

And that crazy thing you read in books about how kids have no bladder and bowel control before they're 2?  I think that's crazy too!  Julian clearly shows some slight control, he does try and hold his poops until we get to the toilet because as soon as we get there it goes BLRRP!  And he can hold his wees until he wakes up after a nap sometimes too.  I truly believe that we can teach them to hold their waste if you start early.

I guess though that it's easier to just let them poop in their nappies, and I don't blame people with their busy lives now that they don't have time to do toilet training.  It really is time consuming!  But I look at my friends now who have children who won't poo on the toilet and only poo in their nappies and think of all the stress they're having and am glad that I have one child who doesn't have that problem, and hopefully a second who won't have the problem either.  But if I can do it, and I am a mother of 2, and I work 4 days a week doing 10 hour days, then most people can too.  But you have to admit I have a pretty schedule driven life, and I don't go out much (but I never did before I had kids anyway).

I think I might make a new post on that subject!

Julian's first cold

I've had a cold for the last few days - it started the day I got my flu shot but that could be just coincidence - I never used to believe in the "you get flu from the flu shot" story.  What I think is more likely was that I had an ealry viral infestation of cold virus and with the extra immunogenic load from the flu shot probably wasn't able to fight off the cold virus when busy making all these new antibodies to the flu viruses.  Anyway started out with a sore throat for a day, then cough next day, then blocked nose the next day, then runny nose the next day!

Julian was very grouchy yesterday, started off being fine and drank 180mL at his first feed and then he didn't eat much for the rest of the day.  He was very clingy and needed to be held to go to sleep and in fact didn't sleep very much at all!  He managed to get 2 hours sleeping on his dad's shoulder.  And at night he would sleep but only for short periods before he got uncomfortable again.  He seemed to do better sleeping on the shoulder and then putting him in the bouncer.  He breastfed ok and had a few naps.

This morning Erika was covered with dried snot!  And in the car yellowie green snot was pouring out of her nose and she was smearing it all over the place.  So fortunately for me it's only a cold and not a major illness or I'd be tearing my hair out with frustration and exhaustion.

Frankly I don't know how I could avoid the virus spreading around the house.  Julian drools everywhere and wipes his nose and face and then touches everything, and so does his sister.  And the ewww of breastfeeding a baby who is dripping snot all over your breast.....!!

Let's just hope that breastfeeding him will mean a milder illness/faster recovery.

A food and baby behaviour diary

I thought I might start a diary about what I eat and how Julian behaves - to see whether things I eat correlate with Julian's bad night behaviour!

7 April
Hot cross bun
Water
Red Curry Chicken
Chocolate
Rice and Pork chop
Ribena

Fed 0430. Fed 1830. Slept 1900. Woke at 2230 changed nappy and bounced to sleep (disposable).  Not fed! Slept till 0400.

8 April
Weetbix and milk
Hot Chocolate
Fried rice and Satay
Water
Chocolate
Chicken Laksa
Ribena

Fed 0400 + pood, and some weetbix at 0645 + BM. Fed 1600 when arrived home R BM, pood after.  Pood in nappy at 1800.  Julian fussy to sleep, drank very litle formula and L BM (1830).  No poo after drink. Crying a lot.  Slept at 1900. Woke at 1950 (settled with picking up after 1 min).

9 April

Oats and yoghurt
Soyamilk
Chocolate
Hot chocolate
Apple
Nutrigrain
Vermicelli noodles and cabbage

Woke at 0200 fed R BM + pood in toilet
Fed at 615pm amd went to bed at 1930

10 April

Cocopops
Soy Milk
Yum Cha
Chocolate
Rabbit stew and Beef with burdock and octopus

Woke at 1am and fed, woke at 4am and 5am and then fed
Pood at 6 and 8
Fed at 9am
Fed at 1pm, 4pm and 6.30pm (little poo)
Bed at 730pm

11 April

Cocopops and Soy milk and Chai tea
Chocolate
McChicken, fries, strawberry shake
Rice, Pork belly, fish, beef and burdock
Cold and flu tablet (night)


Woke at midnight, fed and changed nappy back to sleep
Woke at 530 fed + poo
Fed some weetbix/farex/breastmilk + BM at 9.  No poo.  Bed at 10, up at 1045, pood at 11 (in nappy)
Snack at midday. Slight poo at 2 in nappy. Napped in car. Fed 3pm
Fed at 6pm

12 April

Soy milk and cocopops
Chocolate, Ribena
KFC Burger + Chips + sprite
Fried rice (pork, celery, onion, egg, carrot)

Woke at midnight, fed, and changed nappy back to sleep
Woke at 330 fed changed nappy sleep at 5
Fed at 9am (formula 150mL + BM) and weetbix and pood.  Fed at midday.  Fed at 3pm and then 6.30pm. Small poo.

13 April

Pullapart bread, soymilk
Hot chocolate and banana bread
Sandwich + Almond croissant
Orange juice
Nutri grain
Vietnamese broken rice with pork and jellyfish

Woke at 2am, fed and pood and changed nappy.  Woke at 5am put back to bed.
Fed at 6.30am and pood.  Grumpy all day because he had a cold.
Fed at 6pm and at midnight.  Up all night.

14 April

Banana bread
Water
Chicken kebab and lemonade
Boost juice
Chicken cajun, fish broth, sugar cane drink, rice
chocolate

Up at 5am, fed.  Ate well and slept well at Michelle's. Fed at 6pm when at home, slept at 7pm (no poo)

15 April

Weetbix and soy milk
Hot chocolate

Woke at 1am, fed (no poo), 5am fed and poo.

Rentachook - Chickens in Suburbia

Watching all of this River Cottage stuff with hubby makes me want to grow my own food and have my own chickens.  There is a guy in Sydney who rents chicken coops and chickens (Rentachook), and for $380 you get a chicken coop for 2 chickens, 2 chickens, and some feeding things for the chickens.  After 6 weeks if you don't want to keep the chickens you give it back, and you get $280 back.  So basically $100 for 6 weeks!





I'd like to give it a go.  But mum says that chickens are messy and make poo everywhere and thinks it's a bad idea.  One of my colleagues at work also told me that there are lots of diseases that chickens can get that you have to be aware of and one of those includes some kind of mites the chickens get on their feet, which ended up with that person's kids having bites all over their legs.  Eeew.  So at this stage it looks like there will be no chickens.  Hopefully when the kids are a bit bigger we can have chickens and then have some eggs too.  And I was so looking forward to having chickens.

Finally got my meter for feed in tariff!

Out of the blue yesterday got a call from David the electrician who installed my solar panels saying that he could put the meter in today (at the time I was out for lunch with the family).  Which is exciting because that means soon I can start getting paid about $6 a day for  the electricity that we generate!  Which should at least take heaps off the electricity bill.

Unfortunately they still don't have the antenna for the other Sunnybeam wireless monitor so still waiting on that.

If things go well I should generate about $6 a day in electricity.  How awesome is that :)

Fabrics I want!

There are so many things you can do with nice fabric.  You can add scraps into your scrapbooks, do patchwork, make bibs, nappies or theatre caps!

Here is a fabric that I can't find anywhere in Australia!  One of the O&G registrars at Liverpool had a hat with this material and I oh-so-want!!! (Picture from Kaufman website)

Erika's Birthday party

Spent the evening and morning baking cakes and sausage rolls, and making fairy bread and stuff for Erika's party.  Hubby was a bit hesitant about the whole thing but she had a great time.  Invited all our friends with children her age and we cooked up a feast.

What was on the menu:
Sushi rice with mushroom, vegies and lotus root
Sausage rolls
Celery, capsicum, carrot, cucumber with my spinach/sour cream dip
Ha gao, Siu mai and Gao choy gao (yum cha dumplings)
Fairy bread
Carrot cake
Prawn crackers

Erika got some great presents.  Elmo PJs from Oscar, Play School DVD from Kiera, Learning Ladder tiles and Phonics cards from Jaden and Andrew, 2 beautiful dresses from Gabbie and Lily, Hairy Maclarey book and other books from Tommy.

I made too much fairy bread - being baked in the super hot sun melted the hundreds and thousands and made the bread into toast!