The Salvateenies: Progress

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend at work about the Salvateenies' bedtime routine and my concern that I needed to find a way to get them all to go to bed at the same time before they were old enough to wonder why Daniel had to go to bed first and the others got to stay up and watch more TV. And then, that night, as I picked Daniel up at 9:00 to put him to bed, Caroline toddled over to the kitchen gate in her stretchy little sleep sack, looked up at me, and said, "Mommy? I go bye-bye!" I reached down and held her hand as she walked me back to the bedroom. I put them both in their cribs and they went to sleep without a quarrel. Fifteen minutes later, I put Max down and the other two were already slumbering. After a few days observing this ritual, Max started complaining of being left out and just like that, they all started going to bed together at 9:00. After all the sleep training struggles, it was astonishingly easy how they fell into the new pattern. (knock on wood)

Though she's four pounds lighter and about an inch shorter than her brothers, Caroline has definitely taken the lead verbally. Her favorite word is still definitely "bye bye", but she has added full sentences to her vocabulary, including "I go bye-bye", "I have ball!", and "No - stop that", accompanied by a waggling of her index finger. Gee - wonder where she learned that one? Max has been heard to say, "Yes, I do/did" and he and Daniel continue their orations in Salvatenese.

On Easter, I spent the day in my PJs along with the babies. Really, if they didn't have to get dressed, why should I? Halfway through the afternoon, Caroline decided she wanted to take a bath. She rallied the boys and they crowded around the dining room door knocking on it and pointing through the glass toward the bathroom. I had just changed Caroline and Daniel's diapers, so I didn't bother to grab new ones and just took them into the bathroom, stripped them down, and stood them up in the tub as I filled it with water. They played with all the toys they own, drew all over the walls with their crayons, and giggled at bubbles that I blew into the air over their heads. When they were ready to get out, I wrapped them in their diapers only to decide that Max's held just a bit too much to be re-used. Instead, I let him run out to the living room where I could get him another one. We are hesitant to let them run about au naturel as they have experimented with peeing on the carpet the few times previous, but I figured that they had spent enough time in the bath to have sated any desire to pee.

Wrong.

In the few moments it had taken me to set the tub to draining and usher the other two out of the bathroom, Max had emptied his entire bladder. But, in a move that shows either readiness for potty training or paper training, he had chosen to pee on the plastic "splat mat" that sits under the high chairs, making it easy to wipe up with a cloth and spray with antibacterial cleanser. Perhaps we'll need to set up that training potty sooner than we'd planned.