Adventures in Parenting: Potty Training & Pacifiers

So, Lil' Man is now 2 1/2 years old.  He's a pretty good kid.

Hanging out with his cousins.

We had to get ear tubes in April because of persistent ear infections and a speech delay, and honestly, I think we're seeing a big improvement in his speech and hearing.  However, words that were already regularly in his vocabulary pre-tubes are still pretty mushy, like a lot of his BFF's names at day care. No worries, we'll get there.

So, onto next battles:  

1) The Binky.  We have already whittled binkies down to bedtime/naps only.  But we've had a really hard time trying to pull the trigger.  So...we brought in reinforcement.

In the form of a duck.

Got this book from the Library, and we've been reading it each night. I didn't know it before we got it, but this is probably the perfect book for him.  In this book, Mama Duck weans Baby Duck down to "only in bed, sleepyhead", before finally taking the paci away 100%.  We knew we were going on vaycay in May so we didn't want to do it before that (since sleeping in unfamiliar places is always a crapshoot).  

Once we got back, the Hubs started to slowly whittle his binky down.  We started by just cutting off the tip.  Lil' Man saw it, and held it up to me: "Mama, wook--my binky bwoke!"  And yet he still proceeded to stuff it into his mouth.  Right now, there's only about an inch left.  He has to be holding onto it with his teeth...but he's not letting go so easy.  My suspicion is that eventually, all of the nipple part will be gone and he'll just use it as a fidget toy. 

Or, he will climb out of his crib in the middle of the night, come into our room, and proceed to beat us with the remaining stub.  One of those options.

2) Potty Training.  Lil' Man has zero interest.  He's inadvertently peed in the potty a total of about 3 times in the last 6 months.  It's a battle to get him on the potty after he brushes his teeth (the teeth-brushing is it's own battle), and then once he's sat down and started playing with his bath toys, it's a battle to get him OFF the pot and into his jammies.

We tried saying "if you pee-pee in the potty, you get a candy".  His eyes lit up: "TANDY?"  And then it's all he talks about while he's sitting there.  But once he discovered that there's no candy for simply SITTING on the potty, cue the waterworks.

We I accidentally broke the toilet seat in the bathroom I share with the kiddo (apparently I don't know my own strength...or at least the strength of my butt.)  So we got a new seat that has the little "kiddo sized" seat that folds up into the lid.  Tried to see if maybe going on the "big potty" would be more of an enticement?  Nope.

So I bought a copy of this book on Amazon...I have yet to read it. (In my defense, I was finishing Nicholas Sparks "Best of Me" first...which I borrowed from my mom like 2 years ago.)  But hopefully it contains all the secrets to potty training. 

Until then, here's another 3-4 months' worth of crap-capsules.