Toilet Learning: A Total Regression

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Toilet Learning with Twins: Two of EverythingIt’s been a little while since I last posted about our toilet learning journey.  At that point, both children were using the potty consistently at home, but neither were wearing pants of any kind.  Whenever I put them in training pants they would wee in them!

We decided to introduce them to proper pants.  After initially weeing in them within half an hour (luckily in the kitchen, where we have tiles!) and watching, amazed, as it poured from her lovely princess pants, Little Miss has been dry.  And not just during the day; within a week she was dry at night, too.  This does include a nightly wake-up to use the potty (not so great for me…) but she now wears ordinary pants at night, rather than a pull-up.  She has mastered going to the toilet when we are out and about too, where she likes to be held over the big toilet – she won’t use our travel potty at all!!

Little Man has been a different story entirely.  He had been so good at using the potty but slowly he started to use it less.  We had lots of puddles on the floor, so I started to use training pants again to save the carpets!  He continued to wee in the training pants but I went with it, hoping he might cotton on again soon and use the potty.  He didn’t.  We reached the point where he wasn’t using the potty for any wees at all, only his poos.  And then that stopped too.

He was clearly telling me something.  He wasn’t ready.

I decided to start putting him in disposable pull-ups again.  I think he and I were getting a little stressed out with the constant clean-up operation, so going back to disposables has helped us both relax about the whole thing once more.  He hasn’t really shown any interest in using the potty.  He will occasionally go at bath time, and he used the travel potty when we were out the other day, but that was partly because he likes to wee on the frogs in the disposable bag.

I offer him his potty first thing in the morning, at bath time, and each time I change his pull-up.  If he uses it, then that’s fine; if not, that’s fine too.  I think he is physically ready (and he proved that at the beginning of the process) but emotionally he isn’t – he’s just too busy with life to even contemplate stopping to do something as trivial as wee in a potty.  I shall continue to follow his lead; he’ll let me know when he’s ready to try again.

A Little Bit of Montessori: Helping in the Kitchen

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A Little Bit of Montessori - Helping in the Kitchen

Getting dinner ready can be a struggle when you have small children.  They are getting hungry and tired.  They want your attention, to play and for cuddles.  I had certainly been struggling with it; constantly having to try to cook one handed, with a toddler on my hip, then the other one would decide they wanted to come up, too…

They were also really interested in what I was doing.  They wanted to smell, they wanted to stir, but it was really difficult to manage.  I had been looking at Funpods for a little while, but when I realised there was room in a Learning Tower for two, there was no question; we had to have one.

Our Learning Tower

It has changed our dinner prep routine entirely.  Now, the children are able to watch what I am doing, and join in too.  They each have a chopping board, which sits on a sticky mat to stop it slipping, and they have a chopper too.  They help to chop, wash and mix, and occasionally sample!  We have discovered which vegetables are nice to eat raw (mushroom, carrot, parsnip (yes, parsnip!)) and which aren’t (mainly onion and garlic – they gave them quite a surprise).  They love to help make bread too which is something I do most weeks, to go with soup (because Little Man loves soup with a passion).  I know that might sound a bit crazy but actually it’s quite quick; I make the dough after lunch – which only takes 15 minutes – then leave it to rise on the side in the kitchen for the afternoon.  We then usually make it into pitta breads as part of our dinner prep, because they don’t need a second rise.

chopping courgettes for tea helping in the kitchen - chopping green beans chopping carrots

chopping spinach

making pitta bread

They are also able to get their own snacks ready.  They can spread toast and rice cakes with soft stuff like butter, cream cheese, peanut butter or jam.  They like to chop chunks of cheese as well as fruit and salad vegetables.  This gives them a real sense of responsibility as they take ownership of looking after themselves.  Yes, they’re only two; but they really are very capable.

chopping avocado chopping cucumber chopping cucumber 2 spreading rice cakes 2 spreading rice cakes helping in the kitchen - chopping bananas for snack helping in the kitchen - chopping cheese and apple

 

To see a lovely video of another gorgeous two year old preparing a snack for herself and her big brother, pop over to Kate’s blog, An Everyday Story, and her post “The Worried Cheese: Preparing snacks at 21 months”.  It is my children’s favourite thing to watch on the computer, every time I switch it on they ask if they can “see Sarah chopping?!”