Infant Pottying, and Poor Little Sick Girl

So the past two days, Calliope hasn't had a single wet diaper while awake. And only once did she wake up from a nap with a wet diaper -- all the rest, she woke up dry and successfully peed on the potty.

So based on this, and tales of "potty training boot camp" from the SMC toddler forums, I decided to try her in training pants today. This is far from boot camp, but I figured she needed to learn what wet pants feel like.

The only complicating factor is that Calliope still doesn't have a signal to let me know when she needs to go!

Multiple times this weekend, I figured I had screwed up because I had gone such a long time between pottyings, even as much as 2-3 hours. But then, each time, her diaper was dry.

Still, I think communication is a key element in potty training.

Here's what I learned today: Calliope knows how to keep her diaper dry. But she has not gotten the memo that other things need to stay dry as well! So she pees in them, but not in her "dry feeling" disposable diapers.

This morning she peed at the the toddler water play structure at the playground while we were doing a photo shoot and she was only wearing bloomers (the little diaper cover that comes with a sundress). To be fair to her, she had a tiny waterfall pouring onto her bare feet. Of course it made her have to pee! I wouldn't even have noticed except that, of course, the photographer was scrutinizing her while snapping photos and observed the little stream that looked different from all the other little streams of water.

This afternoon, I officially put her in training pants to go run an errand. We have these cute 18 month size Geber ones that we got as hand me downs. They look like boy shorts on her. Way too big but they don't fall down so... good enough!

Off we went in a friend's car to Fairway, this giant grocery store, of sorts. We stopped for lunch and ate at their giant outdoor deck, overlooking the water. Calliope ate all of two bites of yogurt before fussing to get out of the highchair -- she hasn't been feeling well and has barely been eating solids -- and so I held her in my lap while I ate my own lunch... until I realized that my lap was feeling a bit wet. Thing was, it was so hot and sticky in Brooklyn today, I barely noticed... I was already pretty damp all over. Luckily the shopping cart isn't really affected by damp underwear, and then she went back into the car seat, so no harm was done. She fell asleep in the car seat and slept a full hour, so I have no idea if her pants were newly damp when she woke up, or the same damp. She refused to sit on the potty until after she nursed, when she did produce a good pee. But I'm not sweating it. An SMC mother of an almost two year old said, of potty training this summer, "it's going to be a puddly summer." And I think the same will be true for me.

Potty training a child is a messy business, no matter what age you undertake it!

And if it doesn't happen for us this summer, that's fine too. But it seems like, against all odds, that Calliope might be ready now, or soon. Given the perpetually dry diaper, it seemed unfair to her to not at least try.

In other news, Calliope was oddly fussy this past Tuesday -- the nanny told me she cried inconsolably for thirty minutes, which she had literally never done before. Even when I came home, she clung to me and cried. It was strange. She seemed to have a new rash on her face as well. Over the next two days she started to get a runny nose, and then Friday morning she woke up at 4:30 am with a fever. I hate that feeling of lifting a hot little body out of the crib and realizing your child is sick.

I reluctantly took the day off from work and took her to the pediatrician, mainly because I was worried the rash could be some sort of atypical strep throat/scarlet fever. The doctor, not my regular one, didn't even look at her throat but said the rash was just dry skin. Everything else looked fine to him.

Her fever only lasted 24 hours but she's still not herself. When the ibuprofen wears off, she coughs and then cries, so her throat is clearly hurting. She's barely eaten the last three days, and struggles to nurse because her nose is so congested. I'm not worried that there's anything seriously wrong, it's just hard to see her so uncomfortable. And I'm sad that I have to go back to work tomorrow when she's clearly not all the way well yet... though maybe it's all for the best, so that she can get some rest. I have a very hard time staying home with her -- we were very busy this weekend. And with a 90 minute interlude of crying in the middle of the night last night, she was definitely tired today, and didn't get all the sleep she needed (me neither, but I can only blame myself).

And in other news, things are slowly moving forward with the new apartment. But I still don't know when the closing will be, which means I still can't book my ticket to San Francisco or Vermont. And with the hot weather this weekend, I am reminded of why it would be so great to leave the city for a bit! The hot weather brings weird flashbacks to being very pregnant last summer. I really hope I never have to be pregnant in summer again (though of course I want to be pregnant again some day... I can't believe I just said "of course" about the prospect of future pregnancy. Wow. But what I told a friend recently is, "it's all just so much fun, I can't imagine only doing this once!"