What better way to get over the post-vacation blues than by jumping straight into the next project. We FINALLY decided to potty train R. And re-sleep train Baby Z.

If it were up to us (or really Cindy), R would stay in diapers forever. Aside from the cost, the diaper life is so easy. You can go anywhere you want without having to worry about accidents or potty breaks! But alas, it’s time to bite the bullet. We’ve decided to take it nice and slow so there’s no pressure. One week in and we’ve had accidents galore and only 2 pees in the potty… oye…

Method: We transitioned straight to undies. We’re still diapering up whenever we leave the house and for naps, poops, & bedtime. Initially, we were having R sit on the potty every 10 minutes, but that got tiring for us all. So instead, we’ve just been reminding her to tell us when she needed to pee. And every hour or so we make her sit and try. It seems like she knows the feeling of needing to pee, but gets pee-shy and can’t let it out when she’s on the potty. For the first few days, she was holding in her pee and waiting until nap and bedtime to pee into her diaper. We also noticed she was not drinking water during the day and intentionally waiting to drink water at night (she gets to sleep with her water bottle). We learned UTI’s are a concern for kids who do this, so we have been giving her juice and lots of fruits so she can’t avoid the liquids. We’ll see how long this takes!

As for Baby Z, we kind of halfway sleep-trained her about a month ago. She was sleeping about 10 hours with 1-2 night feeds. Even though that’s pretty good, it still meant we were only getting about 5-6 hours of non-interrupted sleep (at best). Well, her sleep got so off-track in California that we decided to fully sleep-train her and wean her off all night feeds so that we could finally get some solid rest! Since we were more hardcore this round, there was a lot more crying involved. It was really really hard to listen to, especially in the early mornings when we knew a quick feeding could get her back to sleep and buy us another hour or two. But we kept our goal in mind: a full night’s rest. It took nearly all week, but we made it through and Baby Z is sleeping about 12 hours straight with a dream feed! 4 months in and we’ve FINALLY got a good night’s rest!! It feels sooooo good to wake up refreshed!

Method: Full extinction with a dream feed. To make sure Baby Z isn’t starving in the morning, we give her a dream feed right before we head to bed. She usually sleeps through the bulk of the night and wakes frequently in the early morning hours. We don’t get her until “it’s time to get up.” The first two days, she cried all the way until that time (about 1-2 hours on and off). This was the hardest to listen to. Then the next couple of days, she cried for about 20-30 minutes before putting herself back to sleep. And after that, she cried for about 10-15 minutes on and off before going back to sleep. One of the days, she didn’t wake at all and slept the full 12 hours! We’ll see if progress continues this next week!