So, I haven't talked much about Covid on the blog yet. Mainly because when we went into 'lockdown' I was so overwhelmed with everything that was going on it has taken me this long to get my head vaugly back to normal, whatever that is. I will write about it, but not yet.
The time has come here at Plus The Dog to start properly potty training The Boy. It has been a long time coming. Weve talked about it, tried it, given up and talked about it again, but now that he is 3 and we are facing a huge heatwave we figured we ought to try. The Girl took 3 days to more or less get the hang of it, but still had the odd accident even a year later. The Boy is proving much more complicated.
Ignoring, for now, that fact that he is a boy as I make him sit to do everything at the moment, he is a different personality as well. Far more laid back about most things then she is he really dosen't care about weeing himself a bit. Add to that the fact that he is quite single-minded, and while she can interrupt her focus to do something else mores easily, he really struggles to notice things when he is focused on something he enjoys doing (like lego). Together we have a much bigger challenge, but the extra element to all of this is Covid-19.
When we potty trained The Girl, we stopped nappies, had two days of wee everywhere and a month of taking her everywhere with a potty and a towel to sit on, as well as multiple plastic bags and changes of clothes. The odd accident in a aypark did t really bother anyone and for the bus or a cafe I had her sit on a towel and a plastic bag. Accidents happened, but we managed it. Now of course, there is a different context in play. Nobody is cool with bodily fluids. The playparks were shut for 12 weeks because of possible contamination and now have strict rules about how meny can go in, not eating and drinking in them and sanitising every 40seconds or something. Aittle 'accident' in a playpark could clear the area and make the local news, so we don't have the luxury of just ditching the nappies and going all in. We have to put 'going out pants' (pull ups) on if we go out, and despite me trying to keep him just at home at first, he has spent the last 6 months just at home and, frankly, is fed up of it.
So Covid has slowed us down, and he's a smart boy, no amount of telling him that he still needs to tell us if he needs a week in his 'gooing out pants' overrides the fact that he knows they're just fancy nappies, and he has been known to wait me out, all morning, until we are so desperate for bread and milk and fresh air that I put the pull ups on to take him out and he immediately wees, having held out since 7am, 4-&-a-half hours of waiting for his moment.
I know that it is unlikely he will go to university in nappies. I know he will learn, but pre-Covid it would have been faster. Pre-Covid we would have releshed an excuse to stay home for a week, to give both children a week of R & R, but we have had enough of being locked in, and, to be honest, we don't want other children weeing on the slide in the play park either. It's hard to know what the best strategy is right now, or what the Childminder will want when we broch them with this conundrum (they are minimising bodily fluids and contact to clean them up too). I mean, at least it's warm enough to dry the 7 changes of clothes a day on the line I suppose.
And the dog's house trained, so that's something!