Bumwear-free days! - The potty training success story

I'm not sure if you've noticed Alicia wearing Bumwear (cloth diapers) in the photos before, but we started her on cloth diapers since she was two weeks old and she has ditched them since last Wednesday. Yippee!

When I was pregnant with Alicia, we made the decision to save the environment by using less disposable diapers (reserving them only for long naps when she grew older and when she slept through the night). We even tried letting her wear cloth diapers when we went out - but after awhile it got a bit cumbersome, especially when she poos so we caved in to the disposable diaper again for trips out. Other than those situations, Alicia's been always in her bumwear and yes, we've been faithfully washing the cloth diapers for 2.5 years!

I started Alicia on the potty since she was 3mths+, just bringing her to potty now and then and she'd pee sometimes. Lots of hits and misses along the way then at some point in time, she started to not want the potty so we stopped. Then we bought a new potty when she was older and tried again. She went through plenty of love-hate phases with this potty and eventually when she turned two, we bought a toilet seat for her, thinking that she may want to imitate us instead of sitting on the potty. Again, it made her happy to sit there for awhile, going through the motions of sitting, but not actually going about doing her business. After awhile, I decided to go radical and just let her wear a panty instead of bumwear but it failed. I tried every couple of months though but it never worked out.

Then last Wednesday after soiling two bumwears, one after the other in less than 10minutes - I told her that was it. Anyway I've found that sometimes she pees so much at a time or the pee gushes out so fast that the pee leaks from the bumwear, and even disposable diapers recently and hence, I really felt it was time for her to really learn to be potty-trained. And so after a very hard day of scolding and smacking ass, she quickly learnt by Wednesday night - yes, that very night - that she had to go to the potty to pee/poo.

One day of real toilet-training and that's that. :)

I'm so happy! No more washing bumwears till the next babe arrives!! :)

Here's some information about toilet-training in case you need it (and you're not willing to be an ass-smacker like me) :P

Activities to go with The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins

*Backdated post: the activities were conducted at about the time of chinese new year*

Alicia loved this story about the wind which blew so many things away. Before you turn the page to find out what the wind blows off next, you should be able to guess what the wind would take next on its adventure by looking around the page for new characters/items (prediction skills).

Here are some of the activities we did in relation to this book:

(i) Painting a 'kite'

Basically, I just got her to do her usual painting one day and I cut out a kite shape later with a craft scissors, drew in the lines, punched a hole and threaded the yarn through. Though it's not a real kite, she loved it and kept pretending to fly her kite:

(ii) Making a mobile/ sequencing activity


I printed out the items that the wind blew away in the book from here (pg 24 of the document; there are other suggested activities in that pdf doc), pasted them on a cereal box and cut them out individually for Alicia to colour.

After the colouring's done, you can do sequencing (of the story) with your tot using those little cards before you actually make the mobile I made, shown below:

Just get a pair of disposable chopsticks, tape it down, forming a cross. Punch a hole in each card , thread some yarn through and string them onto the chopsticks. Because there are quite a few items, you'd need to have more than one item hanging from each point of the chopsticks (see how I attached them together in the above pics). Lastly, thread more yarn through the X, tie a tight knot and hang it up at the window! :)

(iii) Science: Light vs. heavy

We got a small fan - be careful of those little fingers! - and some random light and heavy items for her for this simple experiment to see what the wind can/ cannot blow away.

There she is with the two-dollar note!:

(iv) Just having fun with a windmill 

Find a windy day to just let your tot have fun with the windmill - see how fast it's spinning!

Testing the wind strength from a greater distance from the window:

(v) Fly a kite - a real one

If you can, fly a real kite with your tot! We didn't manage to but we brought her to see people fly kites though! :)

(vi) Cotton ball race

Saw this activity at Activity Mom some time back. Simply get a straw, trim it so it's shorter and easier to handle, then have a cotton ball race with your tot! :)

Have fun!

The long hiatus

It's been more than two months since the last post about Corduroy. Alicia still loves playing with the buttons, carries her Corduroy around now and then and has learnt the art of buttoning and unbuttoning (mostly the unbuttoning bit).

If you've noticed, there's a new ticker on my blog - yeah, it's that pregnancy ticker! That should explain the long absence. First trimester woes really got to me and blogging was seriously the last thing on my mind. Now that I'm 10w4d today, I feel much better, though I still get those sudden tiredness spells and feel like I got hit by a truck. Fortunately morning sickness this time round was much better than when I had Alicia - the last time I was nauseous throughout the day, retching like every few minutes. This time round, I'm just rather averse to coffee (it was my favourite drink! - just as well, you say), vegetables and some other smells that permeate my kitchen and house at about dinner time. Cooking (other than for Alicia) as you can understand then, was not on my list of favourite things to do and for the past few weeks, we basically ate whatever I felt like eating at that moment. That seemed to be the best solution as I had and have sudden whims and fancies. The preggo wins, naturally, when it comes to choice of food. I just started cooking again lately as I started to miss some of my own cooking and with the first trimester woes abating slightly. 

As for homeschooling, it's taken a backseat for the past few weeks too though we've faithfully gone to the library once a week to do some reading and borrow books. I've made only one set of alphabet learning aids (the letter M) and that's all I've had energy to make. We still have fun reading books though and I started her on a tracing activity book where she learns to draw proper lines to form a picture - long, short, vertical, horizontal, diagonal and other shapes and pictures she sees on the page and fancies to trace (though they aren't really meant to be traced). She was really into it for awhile but her interest has waned slightly recently. Perhaps it's time to whip out a new activity book - she tires of a book after awhile.

Is the pregnancy planned? Nope. We actually wanted to stop at one, or at least have a bigger gap between the kids (though three years is actually to some a big age gap already). Oh well. God has other plans for us I guess!