Diaper-free

Oh, the sweet life of being diaper-free! No more stink; everything gets flushed straight down the potty. Oh, the goodness of God in letting me live during the era of modern plumbing and sanitation! Kevin and I have actually stayed up way past our bedtime on numerous occasions talking about the history of chamber pots. How GRATEFUL we are for modern toilets and sewage! How grateful for hot running water, for showers and drainage. If you stop to think about it, every time we take a shower, it is a luxury that pre-modern mankind has never known before!

Anyway, Noelle has been doing GREAT with potty training. We started "introducing" her to her little potty at around 18 months, putting her on it right before her bath. After about a month of doing this, she began to make "deposits" randomly into it, for which we gave her stickers. But she was still in diapers all day and night and was definitely not trained to use the potty for every single void.

When she hit two years old, I got a little nervous and decided to get serious about potty training before the birth of our next baby. I didn't want to change two kids' diapers, certainly not a toddler's diapers. My opinion is that if the majority of the world potty trains their kids by the time they are one, or at latest, two-years-old, then why can't I? (Do a search and you'll find it's true! Only because of disposable diapers and our modern busy lives have we as a society started to potty train our kids later and later, at three or even four-years-old) (Another interesting fact: my brother was diaper-free by one year old! Yes! And can you believe this was the norm in China and Taiwan just a few decades ago? He was potty trained by my grandmother, who also had bound feet, another relic of ancient culture, but that is besides the point...)

So, in a nutshell, when she turned two years old, we cracked down on potty training by taking away her diapers. No more poo poo and pee pee in the diaper. Now it will go in the potty.

[Cue circus music.]

Screen shows toddler frantically walking about pooping and peeing all over the carpet, underwear, and VERY occasionally, the potty.

Camera does a close-up of mother's contorted face, the anguish and frustration pouring out onto her face in the form of sweat beads.

The above scenario went on for about two weeks, during which time I became a depressed and sour-faced wife. Kevin would come home from work and I just couldn't do much but stare at my food during dinner, mope about my life, and continue to make Noelle sit on the potty like the tyrannical potty training Nazi I had become. (Seriously, putting a child on the potty every 30 minutes of her waking life is truly a form of torture for the mother, not to mention the child).

But, then came small successes. Gummy bears were gobbled up in increasing measure as she experienced the reward of voiding in the potty instead of in her underwear. And there was also the joy of becoming independent, of becoming responsible for her own bodily fluids. Now she screams, "I did it!" every time she goes. I can't imagine depriving her of that pride for another year, had I decided to wait until she was three-years-old.

With a few days more practice, and having to help me clean up her own accidents, she really "got it." We're in the third week of potty training and now she tells me when she needs to go. I can take her out in public and she will use the public restrooms. She sometimes wakes up dry after sleeping. It feels like a miracle and I look at her a whole new way. No longer a baby, I guess. But a small, little adult on her way to independence. It may not be the most delicate of topics for conversation, but I am truly proud of my little girl for learning how to be responsible for her own pees and poops!

Potty Training and Other Fun Adventures

Nobody ever told me that potty training a two-year-old meant that I would have pee spots all over my carpet! Sometimes I can't tell if it's water that spilled or if she ran around and dribbled everywhere. Now I hope you don't avoid coming over because of what I just shared!

Motherhood has been full of surprises. I really had no idea how much a baby can nurse when they first come into the world. Like...up to 18 times a day?

I had no idea that my toddler has the capacity to pee a full load every 15 to 30 minutes at times. Who knew since there was a diaper there to keep everyone blissfully ignorant? I was not warned that I would have to strap the toddler to the potty the entire day in order to prevent wet spots all over my carpet. And did anyone else know that people keep portable potties in their cars to give their kids a place to pee? I certainly didn't.

Also, the child just turned two but is fast approaching the day when she will no longer need a nap at all anymore. I just didn't know that I would still need a nap even after she outgrew hers. Now I find myself saying, "It's mommy's nap time. You keep quiet and try not to wake me up." My how the tables have turned!

I have a feeling that this is just the beginning. When I look at parents who have teenagers to care for, I can only scratch my head...

Home Birth

For baby #2, we are planning a home birth!

I just finished reading Maria Von Trapp's book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, and was struck by what she said about having one of her babies in America. It so closely mirrors the way I feel about it:

"Oh, and time and again, Mrs. Dinker told me that one had to have a doctor and one had to go to a hospital to have a baby. I was finally persuaded to make one concession: the doctor. But go to a hospital -- that was ridiculous. Why? What for? I wasn't sick. In Europe you went to a hospital when you were dangerously sick, and many people died there, but babies were born at home. Would they in the hospital allow my husband to sit at my bedside? Could I hold his hand, look into his eyes? Could my family be in the next room, singing and praying? The answer to all these questions was "no."

All right, that settled it. I tried to explain that a baby had to be born into a home, received by loving hands, not into a hospital, surrounded by ghostly-looking doctors and masked nurses, into the atmosphere of sterilizers and antiseptics. That's why I would ask the doctor to come to our house."

Your Authentic Self

“Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

The Itsy Bitsy Spider and other Memories

We sit on the toilet and sing Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Well, it's more like Noelle sits on her little potty and I sit on the bathroom floor singing The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

There are moments during the day where I look at her and she has her two tiny pointer fingers touching each other, and she is staring intently at her fingers meeting. She sings some melody, not quite "Itsy Bitsy," but it's supposed to be something like it. She's thinking so hard -

"How does it work? How does mommy make her fingers look like a spider climbing up the spout?"

And then I remember so vividly of thinking the exact same thing when I was little. I remember putting my two pointer fingers together and thinking, "It's something like this...but I can't quite finger out how to make the fingers climb..."

It is amazing how we go from simple, happy, goofy, little things to complex, self-sufficient, knowing adults. It happens moment by moment, song by song, letter by letter. And suddenly we are grown up.

This afternoon I put in a ballet workout video. For the first time Noelle got on the floor and imitated what I was doing. Leg in the air, stretching.

And, of course, I remember when I did workout videos with my mom.

Do you ever feel like you are just living the dreams/lives of many mothers before you?

My Sewing Revelation

I have owned a simple sewing machine for 10 years that I got from Walmart for $99. For those 10 years I could never finish an edge to look like it was done with a serger:

All the projects I wanted to do that called for this serged edge required a more expensive sewing machine. But, now, NO MORE!

I cannot believe it took me 10 years to realize that I can create a serged-like look with my humble, little machine by simply using an "over edge stitch."

Also known as the "overlock stitch," it is used to prevent the edge of a fabric from fraying. All you have to do is switch your presser foot to zigzag and sew your edge with half of the zigzag on the fabric and half of the zigzag off.

Or as my instruction manual writes: "Place the edge of the fabric under the presser foot so the needle enters the fabric when the left side of the zigzag stitch is sewn and misses the edge of the fabric with the right side of the stitch. Sew with this needle position along the edge of the fabric."

This little piece of knowledge - just like when I discovered how easy "bias tape" was to use - changes my creative sewing endeavors forever!!!

Going from mere "vision" to "reality of making the vision happen" is so rewarding. There's so much more to discover, too. I think over the years I've realized that I'm not really a crochet, knit, scrapbook or knick knack craft kind of person. But sewing has always stuck, and along with ballet (being my chosen form of dance), it is now a recognized recreational pursuit worth investing in.

Waking up the mind

A curious thing has been happening here in the Lee household.

We are reading more.

During dinner Kevin reads The Screwtape Letters aloud to us. We also read Mrs. Piggle Wiggle for some fun. During dinner prep, I put on The Swiss Family Robinson audiobook for Noelle and me to listen to.

My mind is waking up!

The fire that once burned bright in my schooling days has been lit again, and the flame is burning stronger everyday.

I notice that Noelle can entertain herself for a longer time now. What a huge change from a few months ago! She used to get bored easily and want to watch Sesame Street. Now she's always busy doing something, reading a book, pretending to cook, pretending to dress up, feeding her doll, looking at bugs and dogs. Recently she's been fascinated with Chinese audiobooks and learning her Chinese alphabet. She's not running to the laptop screaming, "Elmo! Elmo! Elmo!" any longer. What a relief! The "no tv" experiment is working. One of the things I seek to give Noelle is the ability to be resourceful and creative and imaginative, and the ability to experience the joy of reading.

Our resolutions are working on me, too. I have a whole, new list of books I want to read and am reading. I'm journaling again. That part of my mind that has been underused is now getting exercised again. To my shame, all the time I've lost, all the moments I did not use my mind for God's glory, when I did not love Him with my fullest potential - may God restore the years that the locusts have eaten.

And Kevin's having a renaissance of his own as well. He's the one who wanted to watch a theatrical adaption of C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, an interest which has plunged me delightfully back into the world of thinking and imagination again. Tonight we sat through a 1.5 hour theatrical adaptation of Screwtape Letters at the Alex Theater in Glendale. Can I just say that my mind felt very strained for the first 15 minutes of the show? My modern, image-dependent, sound-bite addicted, ADHD sensibilities simply could not adapt so quickly to a one-person monologue, much less a monologue written by one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. Ever sat through a Shakespeare play and just got really nervous because you couldn't follow anything they were saying? That was me tonight. But it got easier once my mind started waking up a little to do some work. Paying attention, I am realizing now more than ever before, is really a skill to be cultivated. Neglect it and your whole life suffers.