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March 25, 2007

Potty Trained!?!

Well it seems like Quinn may finally be potty trained...

He wore underwear to school Thursday and Friday and kept them clean the whole day. He wore underwear all day today too and had no accidents. He's really good about telling us when he needs to go which is good since he doesn't take well to use nagging him to just try and sit on the toilet. On several occasions he's done the whole task by himself but even then he likes to let everyone know afterwards... it's still a big deal in his book :-)

He still has yet to use a public restroom. We were out quite a bit today and I'd like to think our trips were perfectly timed but I really think it's just his OCD kicking in. Hopefully he'll find a way to get over it. We even bought a portable, fold-up toilet seat to make it all easier on him... I have to admit, I did get a bit nervous when he fell asleep at dinner. I was holding him and continuously worried that his "asleep" body may not remember that he was wearing underwear. Turns out there was nothing to worry about!

He still uses a diaper at night but last night he really impressed me. He was in bed and about 15 minutes after he had fallen asleep I heard him call out "Mommy, I have to go potty". He got out of bed and really did have to go to the bathroom. So even with a diaper on he chose to use the potty - a big step for him.

Posted by terri at 01:53 AM | Comments (0)

Grasshoppers

Quinn and I were hanging out when he turned and asked me if I liked grasshoppers. I answer "yes" and then he stated "Me too". He turned to me, stared me in the eyes and went on with "Grasshoppers are good bugs. They don't eat people.". Then he continued, in a lecturing sort of voice, with "You have to be gentle if you want to touch them. You can't step on them. You can't eat them either. And you CAN'T put them in your nose or in your ears. You can't give them hugs. They don't like that. You just look at them..." I did my best not to crack up. You know there's a reason why there were so many specific rules on that list...

Posted by terri at 01:41 AM | Comments (0)

Is my finger still there?

Quinn hurt his pinky fingernail at school a couple weeks ago. The nail bled and it looked nasty and painful for a couple of days so we kept it wrapped up. Quinn was really anxious about it and baby'd his hand. Every night we forced him to switch out the bandaid but he would get so upset that we couldn't really get a good look and he would never let us touch it. After a couple of days the nail turned white and was barely attached, but he wouldn't let us clip it. One night while I was changing the bandaid he had his eyes winced closed and he asked in an anxious voice "Is it still there? Is my finger still on?" It was then that I realized what had him so anxious. Every night when Jason and I examined his finger and made general comments like "You think it's going to fall off?" or "Has it fallen off yet" or "Should we just go ahead and cut it off", we knew what we were referring to... his fingernail. However, it quickly became apparent that Quinn thought all those conversations were about his actual finger! He was sure his finger was about to fall off! Hopefully we have cleared up the misunderstanding but it looks like he's going to have a bandaid on that finger and baby the hand until the nail grows in. And if you've ever brought out the band-aids for a 3-year old you know where this is going... After the finger is gently patched up, Quinn points out all of the "other" boo-boos he has. I think he is presently showing off 6 band-aids :-) Oh yeah, one more thing... he apparently inherited my inability to make a decision. So the fact that we are presently offering 4 different types of bandaids makes the nightly doctoring even more fun... Just as you think he's decided which band-aid his specific (yet often invisible) injury needs, he gets you with a "Um... I don't want an Elmo bandaid, I want one with animals on it...". No doubt, he's a chip off the old block :-)

Posted by terri at 01:20 AM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2007

OCD

As you know, Quinn's recently started using the potty pretty much full-time. Well yesterday his teacher and I were talking and she told me something I thought was just hilarious. Apparently Quinn makes them clean the toilet before he will sit on it. He usually selects a specific toilet and then he has them spray and wipe down the seat with cleaner - every time he has to use it. Not only was I shocked that he makes them do that but doubly shocked that they actually honored his request! And I'm sure he watches like a hawk while they are cleaning it to make sure they don't "miss a spot"... he can be quite critical (what a nut!). When I asked Quinn about it last night, he told me he doesn't like the toilets at school cause they are stinky.

I'm not sure how significant of a problem this will become... Last Friday when we were at Red Lobster he asked to use the potty. We went to the bathroom and he checked out each stall stating that they were "too dirty" and that he didn't have to go anymore. I didn't think much of it at the time, but now I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to have to carry travel size cleaners with me everywhere we go...

Of course the logic of cleanliness is by definition of a three year old. There's nothing that stops him from excitedly picking up a coin from the nasty floor in the "dirty" bathroom. In his mind that's just lucky and cool! LOL

Posted by terri at 02:27 PM | Comments (2)

March 18, 2007

Potty Training

Quinn's been doing a fantastic job with potty training the last couple of weeks. Jason kicked it into gear by giving him an initiative...

The morning the Peter Pan movie was release on DVD Jason told Quinn that if he used the potty at school that day they would go buy the movie after school. Quinn did a great job that day and so they went and bought the movie which happened to come with a free character - he picked Captain Hook. Of course he wanted *ALL* the characters (especially Peter Pan), so Jason said they would come back and get one the next day if he used the potty again. So again, the next day he told his teachers when he needed to use the potty and earned himself Peter Pan. Well on the back of the box, it showed several more characters then Best Buy carried, one of which was Smee, who was Quinn's next target. We couldn't find Smee anywhere. Even online, it looked like he was only available in Europe... Every day Quinn continued to use the potty (at school and home) and we would search another store in the evenings. We called Yia-Yia (who was visiting Theo Billy) in LA to have them search there. At last, about a week and a half later we stopped at Toys R Us (not sure why we didn't think to try them earlier) and found a lot of Peter Pan stuff... Smee included. Quinn was so excited!

Now we were worried that once he got Smee he would think the potty deal was over and we would be back to square one but he's kept it up. He now wears underwear in the evenings and on the weekends. He's wearing pull-ups at school but asks to go to the potty and seems to be keeping them dry. What a big boy!

Posted by terri at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2007

I need to grow more fingers

Quinn and I were negotiating how many more minutes he could stay up before bed. Usually he rattles off "two" or "five more minutes" but the other day he wanted to stay up seven more minutes. He tried to make the number with his fingers (he only knows how to represent the numbers one through five), stared at them a bit, then looked up at me and said "I need to grow more fingers, Mommy"!

Posted by terri at 02:44 PM | Comments (0)