I consider myself very lucky. Not only did I escape from the NZ earthquake in Christchurch, I also managed to postpone my data analysis submission to my supervisor. Due to the state of emergency in CC, my uni is closed for a week and everyone in campus is affected. Yoda included. My response for this is YIPPEE cos Yoda won't be bothering me for another week.
Anyway, many good things have happened to me lately. Let's see. My eyelashes have grown back after a bad case of eyelash extensions, my data collection work is now 80% done and my paper submission for a conference has been accepted. Yay! Is that all? Well no. What I'm about to tell you is so much bigger than all of my achievements combined. Are you ready for this? The awesome news is......
Alden is finally toilet trained!!! Can you believe that???
I've been dying to write this entry for almost a week now but I really wanted to make sure he could maintain the habit. Before I go any further, I'd like to thank my sister LOIS WONG SU JIN for initiating the effort. The credit goes to her because she was the one who stopped me from buying diapers for Alden. She was the one who convinced me that Alden could be trained. And she was the one who went all out to campaign this transition.
It didn't happen overnight of course. In the first week, we started the training by ditching the diapers and getting Alden to wear shorts during the day. We briefed him on Toilet-Training 101 and told him to alert us when he felt the urge to pee. When we got tired of changing his pants, we let him run around naked so he could make it to the potty/ toilet when he needed to. This had a lot of consequences of course. There were numerous 'accidents' in the house and Alden's pee was all over the place. He peed on the floor, bed, stairs, sofa, gas cylinder, rug, toys etc and we found ourselves mopping up his pee every hour, everyday. It was physically painful for everyone.
In the second week, we saw some improvements. He would alert us by holding his willy 1 millisecond before he peed but by the time he got to the potty, it was always too late. Most of the time we only managed to get 5% of his pee but we would praise him nonetheless. Sometimes, he'd accidentally pee on my hands when I helped him hold the potty but I never scolded him. This part of the training process was a wee bit gross but it worked.
You see, a week after that, Alden started to recognize the urge to pee and would hold on until he got to the toilet. So far he has managed to do this consistently and whenever he does this, he'd say "no pee on the floor mommy. Alden good boy." Everyone who had the privileged of mopping up his pee rejoiced when this happened. I think my dad was close to tears.
Now, my little Alden still wears diapers at night but during the day, he is usually diaper-less. The aiming isn't so great. And from time to time he still wets his pants. But that's not the point. The point is, the training has been successful and he is now in his way of becoming an independent, toilet-trained toddler.
I am ecstatic because let's face it, when all is said and done, no matter how much I adore my kid, his diapers stink. By toilet training Alden, I get to gloat over my success when I send him to school in October, lessen my carbon foot print and save about $45 a week normally spent on diapers. I never thought this day would come but it has. I am one happy mommy!
