Steps forwards and back

Jenna has had half of the small toys out this morning, playing farms on top of the dressing up box. See a river in the foreground, and all of the people and animals sharing houses in the background. :)



I'm having a tough time sleeping now, Morgan has been kicking me in the back all night and I can't wait for her to have her bed back! She's so wriggly. I love co-sleeping with her, LOVE it, but it's now getting exhausting. On the other hand, she's been sleeping nappyless because I'm right there and in lighter sleep to take her when she suddenly sits bolt upright and says "yoiyet!" I'm not sure how she'll feel about wearing a nappy at night again, but maybe by the end of the week she'll start to take herself?

She's very early to be nappy free overnight, but what's a trusting attached mama to do when she says "NO eep NO eep" every evening and cries if I try to put it on? Put a towel down and hope she knows what she's asking, is what.

The past few months we're almost totally nappy free again. I'm not sure whether it's been a return to late EC or the start of early potty learning. I suppose that's the wonder of it, that there is no line between this and that. She has always been aware of her body and she has usually asked to be changed right away if wet or dirty - even from five months when she stopped full-time EC. And just like Jenna did (who wasn't ECed at all) she started taking herself to the potty from not long after her first birthday, if she was nappyless.

But there's no hurry. I don't understand why potty training has to be this one-way street, short and simple. Nothing else in parenting is! Sometimes there are pauses. Sometimes we seem to go back a step. It's all a learning, a communication, a gradual easing into interdependance that is SOUGHT not independance that is pushed by only one party in the relationship. On a bad day, I care that she asks for the toilet and doesn't go - or fetches a nappy to pee on. On a good day, I'm just amazed by her - for who she is, where she is, no other expectations or requirements.

Fortunately we very rarely have an altogether miss, and she loves to helpfully fetch a nappy to clean up after herself (and even gets out the tea tree spray lol). But even then, it's only on a bad day that I see this as a failure. Why can't you just "get it"? In one go? Without all this stopping and starting?

Because that's just not how humans learn new skills. Only development charts imply otherwise. ;)

Also fortunately the gaining of language skills is now going a bit faster. Of all of the frustrations my toddler and I endure, this is the one that makes us closest to falling out. I've never been here before (and obviously neither has she!). And I really don't know what she wants half of the time. I wish I did. If mindreading was an option I'd prefer that to wishing away the baby words.

This too shall pass, this too shall pass.

All too fast, all too fast.