Baby Girl’s Two Yellow Seats

BG has two yellow seats, and she’s been spending a lot of time on both of them recently. The first is her yellow potty, only of those little plastic container affairs that sits on the floor. She’s gotten quite interested in going on the potty lately, but doesn’t quite gather the timing of the whole thing. A few times she’s sat down with her diaper still on and gone to the bathroom. Other times she’ll take her diaper off just after she’s filled it and then sit down. Or, she’ll sit down, and then wander off and pee somewhere before we can get a new diaper on her. The most important thing, I guess, is that she’s showing interest and trying. We bought some stickers for her last week (she picked them out and then handed over the money) and I told her she gets a sticker each time she goes to the bathroom on her potty. That really seemed to set a fire under her. I suppose I could have used these two weeks with her to get her fully trained, but I don’t think it would happen so quickly, or that her daycare would be able to keep it up when she goes back. I’m definitely going to talk to them when I drop her off tomorrow, but I’m not holding my breath. I figure, I’ll really push it in June, when we’re settled in a place of our own.

Her other yellow chair is a plastic kids chair that she uses at her little craft table, and also sits on, facing the wall, for her time outs. It’s this latter sense that I’m talking about here. BG is rapidly approaching 28 months, and her two-ness is starting to kick in. She gets timeouts for the same two reasons, over and over again – throwing things (toys, food, or dishes, generally) and for hitting (she’s in a slapping stage lately). Even during her most trying behavior, I’m able to stay relatively calm, I think in part because I recognize that this is a developmental stage, so we redirect her, or give her timeout, and then we move on. This last week has been particularly hard because I’ve been dedicating a lot of time to the analysis, and not to her. If I’m in her sight, she wants me to hold her, or she wants to help me, or she just wants me, and unfortunately, ceramic analysis is not very toddler friendly. She’s acting up because she wants attention, and she’ll take it anyway she can get it, even if it’s in the form of mommy frowning at her because she’s just grabbed mommy’s camera off the table and tried to throw it off the deck. Daycare will start tomorrow, and I think a lot of the pressure will be let off. She’ll get to play all day with her friends, which she loves, and I’ll get a good 7 or 8 hours of lab work in. Then, when she comes home I’ll feel more able to devote all my attention to her, and give her all the love she deserves. There’s a lot of guilt bound up in the fact that I need full-day childcare in order to make life work, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. And her smiles and laughter as we played peek-a-boo after a particularly hard day tells me it’s all worth it.