Update

Lots of wild stuff going on around here! I know I have a totally random blog and don't talk about at-home stuff a whole lot. As in all things, I blame my lack of time management skills. Anyway, I hope you will rejoice in these triumphs with me even if you didn't know about our trials.



First off, L is finally pooping on the potty!!! That's right, he is 5 years old and not totally potty trained. Clearly I am the world's worst mother, go ahead and judge. We've tried various things, gotten advice from both his pediatrician and his gastroenterologist, but ultimately he wasn't ready.



So how did this miracle happen? Well, it seems to have been a combination of the end of naps (I would put him in a diaper at naptime and that's when he'd poop, but now he no longer naps), some particularly urgent poops, and peer pressure. I hope it helped that I'd been sitting him on the potty each day, maybe that got him comfortable with the unknown. And it certainly helped that once he'd done it the first time (one of those urgent poops) he got lots of cheers and prizes.



Within ten days of that breakthrough, he gave up bottles!!! I've talked several times on here about his Eosinophilic Esophagitis and that he drinks this really awful formula (Neocate Jr.)and we're really fortunate he has never needed a feeding tube, but the flip side is he continued to drink from baby bottles, even at 5 years old. Again, we've tried a variety of methods (and cups, straws, etc.) and two feeding therapists, but ultimately it was just about L being ready. Two weeks ago, he put his 8pm bottle on the counter and said "Hmmm, bottles are for babies. I am not a baby." And I jumped up and said, "would you like to use a cup instead?" and proceeded to go through the cabinets offering all the different and cool cups and straws we own. He sat down with an extra cup of formula and drank it and said "mmm, this is so good!" and daddy and I sat there with him talking about how he's such a big boy and no more bottles and we'll go shopping tomorrow and pick out some new cups.... Oh and of course we gave him a prize. :-)



We worried about what would happen the next day. When he got up, he was willing to have a cup instead of a bottle and he got a prize when he finished. (Thankfully I'd just stocked up on prizes when he started pooping the week before.) He has kept it up ever since. No bottles for over 2 weeks!!! And unlike the time we took the bottles from him on our initiative rather than his, his volume hasn't significantly dropped. Instead of 7 bottles a day, he gets 7 cups. However, the downside of the transition is that he could drink a bottle in 5 to 10 minutes, it takes him much longer with the cup--so sometimes he doesn't finish in time to head to school or to speech and that is where his volume has dipped a little. We're hoping his speed will pick up with time.

After a few days without bottles, he said to me "I'm a big boy now: one, I poop on the potty, two, I can open the white gate {this is an odd thing for him to list since he's been opening our baby gates for a long time} and three, no more bottles." And I replied, "yes, I think we should have a big boy party." So I guess we'll be having a party soon (when the grandparents visit next week).

The transitions have been a little tough, as I think transitions always are, because I am a creature of habit and rely on my routines. Drinking cups can take a long time and I often have to remind him to "drink, drink, drink." And of course pooping is still new and different and causes us all to stop what we're doing when L says, "I've gotta go poop." But it's all for the good and we rejoice in these huge successes for our big boy. Yea!