Big Girl

Isolde has almost stopped wearing nappies now except for at night and for the occasional no 2. We're so proud of her! Once she was ready it went quickly. We started last weekend and during the week Peter has continued training her while I've been at work. Already after a couple of days she was peeing almost every time on the toilet (once or twice on the potty but she prefers the toilet where we've put one of those kiddy seats).

I tried to train her (and I guess it was the start of the process and helped towards this week's progress, but she certainly wasn't ready then to "cross over") earlier in the summer, at the end of July, beginning of August, as I wanted to try to make her dry before the move to Belgium. She peed a few times then but there were also many accidents, or she held it for a long time until we eventually put a nappy on because she was going to bed or similar. The first week of her two last weeks of pre-school she wasn't wearing nappies and did reasonably well but there were at least one accident at pre-school and sometimes several at home because we were also too busy with the packing that we forgot to ask her if she needed to go. Throughout she was also very anti the whole thing and it was a lot of "no, no, no" and we had to force her to sit on the toilet or potty, which didn't feel too helpful. So we decided to take a break and take it up again when we felt we had time to focus on her and when we had settled in a little in our new home.

We haven't been here for that long and we have still not unpacked everything, but last weekend we felt Isolde had settled in pretty well and we also had the pressure of her new school, where she starts next week, not allowing nappies (except at nap time, but she will only attend in the mornings). At first Isolde was reluctant and refused to sit but when we succeeded in getting her to sit still on the toilet for a while, she could usually pee. The breakthrough came last Sunday, only two days into training, when she wanted to take a bath with Harald and we said "only if you pee on the toilet first". In less than two seconds she had jumped up on the toilet (we've put a child stool/step by the toilet so she easily get up by herself) and peed! 

We knew then that she could do it when and if she wanted too. We also used incentives or, if not "bribed" beforehand, gave her a reward afterwards like an yoghurt icecream, telly time or visit to the playground again (or other just little things like getting the sticker book out). A  very good incentive for her has also been new underwear, especially panties with cars on them (which are really boy's briefs as the girl dept didn't have any with cars...) I bought them earlier in the summer but then she wasn't as receptive - she wanted to wear them but they didn't do the trick so-to-speak. 

I also think she was ready now because she wants to be a big girl now. As I mentioned in my previous post she's been telling us that she is "stor" for a couple of weeks (I think she said it once or twice before the move but certainly since we arrived here) and we have utilised this by telling her that big girls go on the toilet and not in a nappy.

So hopefully she should be fine at school on Monday! She still needs reminding to go - and at school they have pee times where they all have to (try to) go - but she also tells us that she needs to go or just goes to the toilet herself. 

And in other news Harald has two teeth that are about to come up and he's trying to crawl but more about that in another post!

Have a nice weekend!