A lot can happen in 11 months. Apparently nothing I bothered to blog about, but life goes on changing day by day until suddenly, it’s almost a year later. Only one major change, but it’s a happy one:
Last summer, in desperation, I started asking Buzz when he would stop wearing diapers; reminding him he couldn’t go to preschool in diapers; talking about how cool all his friends were because they wore underwear. He responded by saying, “When I’m four, I won’t wear diapers anymore.” Well, I kind of thought he might be serious, but we were still a good four months away from that day and I had to hope it wouldn’t take that long!
On his birthday, he informed me he wasn’t really four until he had cake and presents. So, after the sugar we sent him to bed all diapered up. (I was pretty sure his sleeping self would forget about his promise.)
The next morning I reminded him that he was four now, so he put on his underwear and kicked the diaper habit, just like that! He’s had fewer accidents than either of his older brothers, too. Sigh. I am glad I didn’t spend much time worrying about him, and I’m so happy it was this easy. I just wish he had decided on a different landmark, a few hundred diaper dollars previous. (Or that I had known how long he’d wait so I could save money by putting him in cloth!)
Did you potty train your boys early, only to have them regress? Is it gross to let them keep wearing diapers until they’re old enough to practically change their own diapers? Is it selfish or smart parenting to let them wait until they can make the decision (and follow through on it)?
P.S.–No more potty talk for awhile, I promise!
Boy Crazy 
Each child is oh so different. That’s one of the great things about parenting, it is always a challenge, and while I’ve never had one in diapers that long, perhaps she should have been. Maybe it would have saved us both a lot of stress and her some health issues?
Trial and error, I guess. Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we make extra work for ourselves and the kids. I marvel daily at how forgiving my kids are of all my mistakes, and I hope I can make fewer of them as time goes on. Cause I really don’t want them all to end up in therapy!
We were very lucky with Camden – he potty trained himself soon after his third birthday. This was great because Nathan was just 2 months old at the time. Heather was getting ready one morning, saw that someone had left something in our toilet, initially thought it was me, then realized that her husband doesn’t do that (she admitted that the lack of sleep inherent in having a newborn was significantly slowing her thought process), and then happily realized that it was Camden. She bought him some underpants that day and we’ve never looked back.
Oh, lucky you! Well, I guess Buzz was pretty easy, he just waited an extra year. Such a joy to leave those diapers behind, isn’t it?