Today is Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year if you aren’t Chinese and celebrate the Lunar New Year. It’s the year of the goat this year.
This is a big holiday over in the Asian countries, many businesses are closed for a couple days. My favorite part about CNY is that the unmarried get red packets filled with money. Unfortunately, I’m married now so I’m the one that’s supposed to give the kids red packets. Also, lots of great yummy food is made just like any big holiday.
If you are looking for a good list of Chinese New Year recipes Jaden over at Steamy Kitchen provides an extensive list!
On the Potty Training front… technically Ian is potty trained!! He wears underwear 90% of the time and has come home from daycare in the same pants and underwear that I sent him in for about a week now. He still wears a pull up during nap time and bed time. I completely expected more accidents!! He just got it. YAY!
Some tips that worked for us:
Consistency
Last Saturday was the first full day of no pull ups. Ian downright refused to use the restroom even with the promise of jelly beans and/or matchbox cars and then he peed his pants and pooped his pants. He didn’t like that. Sunday he stopped refusing to use the potty, but still didn’t tell us he needed to go, but he started doing a “peepee” dance as I call it and we took him to the restroom when we caught it. We even went to a birthday party on Saturday, I put a pull up on just in case, I also had an extra potty in the trunk. We had to use that extra potty while we were out playing at a park and the only toilet available was a porta potty. It’s now our emergency potty and stays in the trunk (my intentions were to have an extra toilet at my parents’ house).
Rewards
I put a jar of jelly beans and a basket of matchbox cars in the bathroom. On Saturday if he just sat on the potty he got a jelly bean, if he actually did something #1 or #2 then he got a car. I also cheered & danced and made huge deal out of him going to the potty. I told him he made mommy really happy and really proud. These things really motivated him. He also ran around telling everyone he got a car for going potty. We are now on a sticker reward system, he gets a sticker every time he goes to the bathroom, then after he fills it up he gets a bigger toy.
Patience and Love
When he goes on the potty I make a big deal out of it. When he had an accident, I didn’t yell at him or get mad. I just gently told him it was OK and that next time we should try to go on the potty. Sometimes it takes a long time for a toddler to poop…I had to sit on the edge of the bath tub and have a conversation with Ian about trucks and laugh about his farts for about 10 minutes.
Also, if you send your kid to daycare make sure you guys are on the same page. Ian had accidents at day care because she does potty time differently than we do at home. Ian is the type of kid that doesn’t deviate from the norm (whatever is norm to him anyways). We were using a small potty, she has them on the big potty. We are having Ian sit to pee, boys stand at daycare. Once we communicated what was different and got on the same page he stopped having accidents.
(Shout out to Ian’s teacher, she is wonderful and I can’t imagine what I would do without her. She’s a much braver woman than me taking care of all those kids while I just sit behind a computer screen writing code and creating reports all day.)
I’m so happy it’s going so well for Ian, I hope it goes this well when it’s time for Jensen to go through potty training. 🙂
No potty training for you yet 🙂
*None of these pictures are related to Potty Training or Chinese New Years. They are just random pictures I wanted to share with you 😀
