Potty Training and Night Sleep

Christopher has been doing EXCELLENT in the potty training department!!! I think it's safe to say that we are officially day trained! Woo hoo!!! He's also stayed dry the last 3 nights, but I'm not ready to let him wear underwear quite yet.

On the down-side...Christopher has woken up in the night the last 2 nights. Not from having to go potty. Not from having a bad dream (that I can tell). I honestly don't have a clue why he's waking up. This is the child who's been a perfect sleeper (besides when sick or when he's had a bad dream) since he weaned at about 17 months old!

Wednesday night, he woke up once SCREAMING around 2:30. I ran in there thinking he'd had a bad dream and it turned out that he was just ANGRY that his glow-in-the-dark stars (look like the Big Dipper) weren't glowing! >:( It took me about 10 minutes to calm him down and another 35 or so to get him back into his bed and to the point where I could go back to mine. Of course, it didn't help that I'd stayed up late and had only been asleep for about an hour when he woke me up. :p

Thursday night, he woke me up twice...once at 1:30 (I just covered him back up and rubbed his back for a few minutes) and then again around 4:45. It was the 2nd waking that was the worst. He wanted me to lay with him, which I did for about 45 minutes. When I *thought* he was asleep, I tried to get up. Unfortunately, he wasn't and started fussing again. I tried telling him that I needed to use the bathroom (hoping he'd let me leave and then fall asleep), but he then requested to go, too. So, after finishing, I firmly stated that it was time to go back to sleep and for Mama to go back to her bed. I tucked him in and and went back to my own bed. That was around 5:30. Well, around 6:00 while Shad was getting ready for work, Christopher once again got up. This time, he wanted to come and lay in bed with me. I let him, but it didn't last long. By 6:30, he said he was ready to go back to his bed and go to sleep. By 7:00, I heard him up in the bathroom. He needed help, so since I had to soon start getting ready for MOPS, I decided that we were just up for the day. :p So, minus a few minutes of dozing, I've basically been awake since about 4:45. I put Christopher down for a nap around 1:15, but even with as tired as he was, he didn't fall asleep until about 2:00.

I'm hoping his sleep issues are just a very short-lived phase and not going to be something that keeps occuring!

Are We Nearly Trained???

While on vacation, I took underwear for Christopher, but didn't put on a single pair. Instead, when not in his swimsuit, he wore Pull-Ups. So, after we got home, I wasn't sure how he'd do going back into underwear. Well, we began, once again, the quest to be day-trained on Monday (8/25). We had the sporadic accidents all week long...until Saturday (8/30) when he stayed dry! We are now on Day 7 of absolutely NO accidents during the day!!! Woo hoo!!! To top it off, he started preschool on Tuesday. Since he'd been doing so well, I didn't want to mess things up, so I sent him in underwear with Pull-Ups in his bag for naptime and just in case. I was thrilled when I picked him up and saw that he was wearing the same shorts I put on him that morning! So, we've marched on and haven't looked back! He can also make it through naptimes with no accidents, so I think I'm ready to make the switch there, too. We're getting close to being night-trained as well, but I don't quite have confidence that he can stay dry every night. It's part of our bedtime routine now to go potty and he *has* woken me up in the night saying he had to go, but he's also had a wet Pull-Up from not going first thing in the morning. So, we're still working on it. I probably just need to go ahead and bite the bullet and let him wear underwear to bed since I think the Pull-Ups sometimes make him lazy. I don't know. I'd like to try a bit longer to make sure he can stay dry all night or can get up to go potty.

But for now, I think it's safe to say that he's day trained! Woo hoo!!! Looking back, it really wasn't too bad. After initially dropping diapers during the day (August 1), he started off doing really good in Pull-Ups. However, our biggest interruption (as expected) was our week-long vacation. Once we got home, though, and resumed our normal routine, he started doing great again! I was a bit worried about starting school, but as always, he's shown me that there's no reason to worry! So, overall, it's taken us right at about 1 month to day-train, including the 1 week vacation set-back. Not bad!