potty training?

Potty training sucks!  Oliver came with some potty training skills, not really.  Oliver came with the ability to be compliant and sit on the toilet, it's what he was trained to do before his arrival here.  He wasn't trained to feel the sensation of needing to go and then go, no at the orphanage you sit when you are told to and stay as long as needed, maybe longer.  I taught Oliver his all his upper and lower case letters and letter sounds while sitting on the potty.  Fast forward to present day, he still has weekly accidents and let's not even discuss night time potty training, can you even train someone to not pee themselves at night?  He pees before he goes to bed, around 8pm, again when Jim goes to bed around 9ish, and again when I go to bed close to 11, and he still wakes up wet 75% of the time.  I try not to discuss it with him anymore, I figure he'll get it sometime, at least he doesn't accidents at school.


Then there is Lydia, I'm in no hurry to potty train her.  I really don't mind the adorable cloth diapers, and I'm even okay with washing them.  Lydia on the other hand, she wants nothing to do with diapers.  She rips them off before I can get them fully snapped on her.  Wednesday of last week I gave in.  It was a blah rainy day so we were not planning on going anywhere, I set the little potty outside the bathroom and decide to just let her run around in a dress with no diaper or underpants and see what happens.  She normally wakes up dry so I got her up and put her right on the potty, after a couple minutes she made it happen.  I put her dress on and tell her when she feels she needs to pee she should go sit on the potty...like she can even understand that.  She must have.  At one point we were doing homework and drawing at the table, she crawled down, walked away, and pooped on the toilet.  Hmmm.  No accidents all day.  So I guess we are doing this?  There have been accidents, but also tons of success. I just started letting her nap without her diaper, and go on outings without her diaper, and she's used a few public toilets, she even made it through church on Sunday.  She is pretty adorable in Oliver's outgrown Thomas the Train underpants. Here we go, for now. 

say what? not much...

At Lydia's 6 month appointment I mentioned that I thought she didn't babble much.

At her 1 year appointment she was supposed to be saying about 10ish words...maybe 8, maybe.

The 18 month appointment yielded news that by her 2 year visit she should be saying 50 words.  50!

 Well here we sit at 22 months old and Lydia might say 10-12 things.  Maybe she's just a quiet soul, maybe she is more thoughtful than vocal, maybe she just likes to take in the world around her...all possibilities, but it's my job to help her be as successful as possible so I call up the early intervention folks and request a developmental assessment.

They assess many areas of development, but we focus more on speech.  They ask me questions, they observe her play, and notice how she interacts with them and with JJ and myself (I sent Oliver out to play with a friend).  Now in order to qualify for help you have to be 25% or more below where you should be.  At the end of our time together the ladies tell me that Lydia doesn't qualify for services because she's around 23/24% below the norm for her age, rocking verbal production skills of a 17 month old.  Well, that's about the worst place you can be. Lucky for us, and Lydia, they said that they would give Lydia speech services.  So sometime in the near future a speech therapist will start visiting once a week and giving me different techniques to help Lydia.  Give her a few months and maybe she'll be stealing some of Oliver's air time.