Small Victories

Last night/this morning we had a couple of small victories.  First, Zach got up and went potty in the middle of the night without purposely waking Mike or me up.  That's big.  Zach had been wearing a pull-up to bed since he first got potty-trained 10 months ago.  Ever since just before Drew was born 7+ months ago, Zach has been getting up during the night to go potty, and waking up most mornings with a dry diaper.  I can't even remember the last time he woke up with a wet diaper; it's been several months.  However, the last few weeks he was sometimes getting up 2x a night to potty, which seemed a little excessive, especially now that Drew is sleeping all night.  Anyway, we decided last week that we would stop putting a pull-up on Zach at night and instead would let him sleep just in his pajama shorts.  This would make it easier for him to get his pants up and down without trying to get that bulky, awkward pull-up up and down, and thus make it possible for him to get up by himself to potty at night.  I was worried the first couple of nights that he'd start wetting the bed or something.  That didn't happen.  I'd say the first few nights were good- he didn't get up at all and didn't wet the bed.  However, then I started waking up at night to Zach's bawling and screaming bloody murder at night.  I'd go into his room, and he'd be sitting up in bed, just screeching, literally.  Upon entering his room I'd ask what the problem was, and he'd sit there and ignore me and keep screaming.  So then as I went to leave his room, he'd tell me he had to go potty.  I guess I'm not a great mom, because I had no patience for all this carrying on at all hours.  If you're sitting in your room and you need to pee, don't sit there and cry; get up and go to the bathroom!  And that's basically what I would tell him.  So last night we went over with Zach how he should get up and go by himself, but I also told him that if he wanted to come to our bedroom door and tell us he was going potty, that would be fine.  Well, I woke up at 4:25 this morning because I heard his door open.  Waiting for him to say something, I laid there listening as he went in, did his business, and headed back to his bedroom and shut his door.  He never said a word to us and there were no tears.  Yay!  Good boy, Zach!  We talked about it this morning after he got up and I told him how proud I was, and he seemed to feel proud, too.

Drew had his own little victory, too.  While in Minnesota he slept great- from 7 p.m. most nights until after 7 a.m. most days.  This trend continued when we got home, for about a week.  These past few days, however, we've heard Drew awake before 6 a.m.!  Today I first heard him around 5:40.  We tried to be as quiet as possible (our bathroom wall with our sinks and toilet is the wall shared by his crib, of course) getting up and showered.  Amazingly, he got himself back to sleep somewhere around 6:05-6:10 or so, and didn't wake up again until just after 7 a.m.  That's a big step over yesterday, when he never went back to sleep.

I type all this about victories as Drew is upstairs crying after a 30 minute nap and Zach talks and plays in his bed instead of napping.  You can't have your cake and eat it, too, right?