Lola's Milestones

Lola has had several big milestones lately, and I feel the need to document them.

First, she is now forward-facing in her car seat.  This kind of happened randomly about a month ago.  I mentioned to Joseph that I wanted to do some research and see if we should turn her around.  They recommend keeping kids rear-facing until they're 2, but some people say you should do it as long as possible.  Well, I didn't get around to researching, and Joseph just turned her seat around one day.  She apparently loved it, so he turned the seat around in the other car too.  She does seem to really like it, and she can climb into the car and up into her seat all by herself, which is nice for me.  So while I would have liked to keep her rear-facing longer, it seems to be working out that we turned her around.

Second, we moved Lola to a "big girl bed".  It's a full-size mattress/box spring set on the floor, the same bed I had in college that had been in our upstairs guest room, which is now Lola's "big girl" room.  We decided to move her from the back bedroom upstairs to the front bedroom because of furniture logistics.  The front bedroom doesn't have enough wall space for both a crib and a bed, and I really liked having a bed in the nursery for middle-of-the-night feedings.  It's weird, because the rooms look identical, but the space between the closets in the front bedroom is smaller, with not enough room for the crib.  So we decided to keep the back bedroom as the nursery and make the front bedroom Lola's room.  It's kind of a pain since we'll have to paint the nursery (it's currently pink), but at least we don't have to take apart the crib and move it to the other room.

We set up the bed for her the weekend after Labor Day, along with new furniture we bought at the Scott Antique Market, and just slowly started introducing her to it.  We would read books in there and call it her "big girl bed", but then she would ask to sleep in the crib, and we let her.  I moved all of her clothes and other items to the room over the next two weeks to make it really feel like her room.  Then the only thing she was doing in her old room was sleeping.  The last week of September, after we got back from Vermont, she finally started sleeping in the bed.  Joseph seemed to have the magic touch and could get her to sleep in it.  She did wake a few times but usually went back to bed pretty easily.  The week Joseph was out of town at a conference, I gave up and put her in the crib every night because I didn't want to fight.  But since he's been back, she's slept in the bed every night.  We originally just put pool noodles under the fitted sheet to act as a barrier, but she fell out a few times, so we now have rails on each side.  I think she feels safer and more comfortable that way.  She can climb up onto the bed using her little chair, so she gets in and out on her own.

Finally, Lola is now potty trained!  She may still have an accident here or there, but it's been two weeks since we started training and she has done SO well.  We did the three-day method where you just put the child in underwear and completely stop using diapers, even when sleeping.  The Friday of our boot camp weekend, she started off strong, going pee in the potty six times in the morning with no accidents.  Then she had several small accidents while trying to go down for nap, one big one while napping, and a bunch of accidents in the afternoon.  My confidence definitely took a hit.  She wet the bed that night, as we expected.  But Saturday she was a champ and didn't have any accidents except while going down for a nap and while napping.  Sunday was the same thing, just one accident at the zoo and an accident while napping.  She was really good about telling us when she had to go to the potty.  And all of these accidents were just pee - miraculously she was fine pooping on the potty.  We've been rewarding her with stickers and M&Ms, which she loves.  She also responds really well to praise, so we get really excited for her when she goes on the potty.

I was nervous about sending her to school on Monday.  I emailed her teachers to warn them that we had trained her, and that she would likely have an accident during nap.  When I picked her up, she had had NO accidents, not even during naptime, and she even pooped on the potty there.  I was amazed!  The rest of the week she did well too, with I think just one small pee accident at school.

Then last weekend, we had a bit of regression.  She had poop-in-her-panties accidents Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, usually when waking up in the morning.  I was really surprised by this, because she had already gotten up in the morning several other times and pooped on the potty.  But we took it as a teaching opportunity and just told her that she needs to go in the potty now.  She's been accident-free since Tuesday and has gone poop on the potty several times since then, so hopefully she's got it down now.

Overall, Lola has done extremely well and I'm so proud of her.  I thought she was ready, but I was still nervous, and now I'm glad we did it.  We still have her diaper-free at night, even though she's wet the bed most nights.  There have been a few nights when she has woken up and gone to the potty, but mostly she's asleep so soundly that she just pees in bed.  We decided to stick it out a while longer to see if she figures it out.  We are afraid if we start using pull-ups now, she'll use them as a crutch and not learn how to get up and go.  Luckily for me, Joseph is in charge of middle-of-the-night wakings.  It's too much for me physically to go upstairs, change Lola, change the sheets, etc.  Plus, I'll be getting up multiple times a night in the near future for about six months, so he can handle this.  He also seems to be much better at getting her to sleep than I am.  We bought some pads that lay on top of the sheet and absorb liquid, so as long as she goes on those, he at least doesn't have to change the sheets.

My baby girl is definitely a big girl now!

Forward-facing car seat

In her big girl undies

Last photos of her nursery

Last photos of her nursery

Last photos of her nursery

Big girl room (still have some decorating to do)

Big girl room (still have some decorating to do)

Big girl room (still have some decorating to do)

Big girl room (still have some decorating to do)