Evelyn Moments

I decided to try and post more and Evelyn always provides tons of good entertainment, I thought I'd share. (This was started by Sandra and finished by Will)

Potty Training.   Those two words always bring about tons of great stories from every parent. I'm proud to say we have our own stories to share now.  Even before we got a potty, Evelyn was very interested in the potty.  She said pee and poo a lot and it seemed as if she would tell us when she was going too.  So, we thought she was ready. :)  Additionally, we'd heard somewhere that a child might be ready to start potty training when they seem to be in control of their bowels.  Well, this seems to have been the case for awhile.  For example, last fall, one day we were cleaning, and had Evelyn in only a diaper.  She managed to get her diaper off.  Sandra looked at her, and told her that she better not pee on the floor.  So what did she do?  You guessed it...Well, we learned our lesson for awhile, but recently we've let her run around occasionally in only a diaper, with similar consequences.  So, we decided to look for a potty.  Our good friends were getting rid of a potty seat, so we took it off their hands.

Evelyn loved it from the start.  She sat on it with her clothes on and would pick it up and carry it around the house.  When we let her sit on it w/o a diaper on she sat and sat and sat and sat and sat.  Unfortunately, her love for the potty was so much that she didn't want to get it dirty (at least we'll assume that's the reason why she chose to pee on the floor near the potty, rather peeing in the potty).  So, after cleaning up pee off of the floor multiple times, we decided to give the whole potty training thing a rest for few weeks.
Fast forward to a few days ago.  When Evelyn woke up, she kept saying "poopie".  This is somewhat of a regular occurrence.  Nevertheless, we humored her and put her on her potty.  Lo and behold, after a couple minutes, the glorious sound of a stream of water hitting plastic could be heard.  Evelyn was rewarded with a peanut butter cup (well, technically one of those chocolate peanut butter eggs from Easter).  We had been promising her candy if she used the potty, and that's what she got.  Well, the next day we were confident we were making progress.  So, after she got up, we put her right on her potty.  She sat there for a few seconds, and then we reminded her of the candy reward that would be forthcoming, and she proceeded to get up off the potty, walk to the closet where the candy is kept, and peed on the floor.  Perhaps there was a bit of a miscommunication.

Fast forward to last night.  There was an intense thunderstorm (I really hate weather radios.  I suppose they can save lives, but they really are annoying when they scare you half to death in the middle of the night to tell you that there is a thunderstorm nearby).  Anyway, at one point, Sandra and I were jolted awake by what sounded like a bomb being dropped on our house.  I have never heard thunder that loud.  It even made one of Evelyn's toy's start making noise (I'm not sure how it did that.  Perhaps it shook everything too much that it made it bump into something else).  Well, we checked on Evelyn, to make sure it didn't upset her.  She was fast asleep.  However, apparently before she had fallen asleep, she had managed to unzip her sleeper.  She had also taken off her diaper, although we didn't realize this at the time.  Well, that morning, after we got her up, she kept saying "pocket."  (She loves pockets).  However, she doesn't actually have any pockets in her sleeper.  But she kept saying it, and touching her  leg.  Well, finally we realized that what she was touching on her leg was her diaper--it was all bunched up on one side.  Apparently she understands that a pocket is where something is kept inside of clothes, and so a diaper in her sleeper met this definition.  Well, the amazing thing was that her sleeper was dry.  So, we jumped on the opportunity and stripped off her clothes and went to sit her on the potty.  Well, the potty was in the kitchen.  As mentioned earlier, Evelyn loves her potty, and carries it around the house.  Well, it ended up in the kitchen.  We carried it into the bathroom, and in walked Evelyn.  She took one look at it, and peed on the floor.  That was understandable.  So, we sat her down on the potty and cleaned it up (sitting her down on the potty was mainly just to have someplace to stick her while the clean-up happened).  After cleaning up her little accident, upon looking at her again, we realized that there was a puddle around the potty.  She had used the potty again! (she just wasn't quite sitting all the way on it--she had gotten a little bit of pee in it).  This time, her reward was some M&M's.  However, she didn't eat them right away.  She just held them in her hand until  they melted (she always insists on just holding things).  She still enjoyed them though...hopefully enough to motivate her to use the potty tomorrow.  We'll keep you posted (since I'm sure stories of poop and pee will keep readers coming back...)