What's New: A Bed and Lots of Pee

Micah has a new bed, and Drew has graduated up to the toddler bed!  A few months ago, my friend Allison posted a cute picture of 2 of her boys, the youngest in a toddler bed, and the next older on a bed above him, but not high enough to be in an actual bunk bed.  I was quite intrigued, so I asked her about the bed.  She said it was a "junior loft bed", so it wasn't as high as a real bunk bed, but it still took a regular twin mattress.  She had gotten hers from someone on their base, but she told me that it was like this one on walmart.com.  It seemed like a great idea to me, because I had visions of Micah hanging off the ceiling fan at the very least from a regular bunk bed.

Well, a few weeks ago we finally got motivated enough to buy one, but we decided to buy a wooden one from amazon.  It looks great and went together easily--but I failed to compare the measurements of this bed versus the metal one from Walmart, and it turns out this one is quite a few inches shorter.  Oops!  Drew didn't seem to mind, but when he laid on the toddler bed, it made me think of being in an MRI tube or something, LOL.  So Bob problem-solved and bought some of those bed raisers.  You can see them under the posts of the wooden bed.  Those raised it with no problem, and except for the fact that the first step of the ladder is pretty high off the ground, it works great!  (And the high first step hasn't seemed to bother anyone at all either.)  I will say, if you happen to be considering one of these beds, the wooden one has a TERRIBLE smell for the first . . . while.  A week or two, at least.  So while it looks great, I'm not sure I would 100% recommend it.

Micah has done just fine in the loft bed.  He loves it, and has slept well.  Drew has done okay on the toddler bed.  It turns out he takes after his Uncle Dan and turns around a lot at night.  He fell out a time or 2, but then we found the bed rail, which solved that problem.  He was waking up in the wee hours of the morning for several nights, but I conjectured that he was just cold (not sur ehow, since it's been sooo hot here lately), so I put a warmer blanket in the bed, and again, that seemed to do the trick.

The goal of this whole transition is to get Verity into the crib in Micah and Drew's room, and out of our closet!  Although it's nice, big, and dark (and Verity sleeps like a champ in there), Bob would like to be able to get stuff out of his closet in the (very) early mornings, so he doesn't have to worry about having everything out of there the night before, before Verity goes to bed.

Unfortunately, other parties are not cooperating with this grand plan.  Verity was NOT amused when we put her down for the night in the crib.  She fussed and carried on for awhile, although she did eventually go off to sleep.  But then when either Drew or Micah woke up in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom, the light shined right in on her, and she was wide awake.  I finally just got her and put her back in the pack-n-play in the closet, where she sighed a happy sigh and went right off to sleep.  I've put her down for naps in the crib too, but she never sleeps that long or that well.  I think we're going to wait a few more months and then try again.

And the other new thing is lots of pee.  Not in the potty, unfortunately.  I wrote in the beginning of July about how easy Drew was to potty-train.  And he was great!  But we came back from Ohio, and the wheels fell off.  I don't even really know what happened!  I think that Drew decided he would start standing up to pee.  But unfortunately he is not quite tall enough, so that resulted in a big puddle of pee right in the front of the potty.  Lots of puddles, actually.  It took me a little while to even figure out what was going on, because he never asked for help, or was alarmed by the big puddle or anything at all.  He would pee, come back out for help putting in his (dry) underwear and shorts . . . and then eventually I or someone else would head into the bathroom, where we would discover the huge puddle, right at the base of the potty.  Ack!  We eventually narrowed down the culprit to Drew, and I forbid any attempt at standing to pee.  But then Drew developed a new twist, which involved him waiting too long to go, and so he would start peeing before he made it onto the potty.  Now he has never had the kind of "pee running down the legs uncontrollably" accidents that most of my other kids have had when they waited too long.  No, he just pees a slight bit, enough to make the front of his underwear wet, and occasionally his shorts.  Sometimes he will get them off, and then pee on the floor, so I am still occasionally dealing with puddles, although this time when there's a puddle, his underwear are always somewhat wet.  Argh!!  So frustrating!!

Yesterday was a particularly bad day, and he just didn't seem to really care a bit.  I've been having him clean up the puddles for about a week now, which drives me crazy since he takes forEVER to wipe up the puddle with paper towels, and then wipe up the disinfectant spray.  But he has been steadily increasing the number of pairs of underwear he has been going through over the course of the past week or so, and it's been driving me more and more crazy!  Yesterday, after his 3rd pair of underwear and shorts, we told him he could not go swimming with the other kids and Bob.  Oh, he was devastated!  He cried and cried, but I told him that only big boys got to go swimming, because they wouldn't pee in the pool.  He carried on so long I eventually just put him to bed at 7:30.  He woke up in the middle of the night, crying, "I want to go swimming!"

Today was a better day.  He did pee on the floor once, down in the basement bathroom, but he was distracted by watching Frozen with the girls and Elena.  I am hopeful we will start trending upward.  I have started setting the timer to remind myself to tell him to go potty every hour and a half.  Predictably, he doesn't want to go, but he has lost the privilege of deciding for himself when to go!  He needs a reset, although honestly, without the timer, I simply can't remember to tell him on a regular basis.  My brain is just too full right now-and I mentally checked off potty-training for him the beginning of July!

I tell you what--there is always something with potty-training!  Definitely my least favorite stage of motherhood.  Give me labor and delivery any day!