On Pause

Thank you everyone who commented for your encouragement, but my update on her potty progress will be on pause, because we stopped the training the next day. Aloria was and is more sick then I first thought. She doesn't just have a runny nose. She had rubbed her nose goo in her eyes, I'm thinking, and her eyes got infected so that they goop up green and yellow stuff in the inside corners and constantly drip tears. Her cough was keeping her up at night, she had a low grade fever for two nights, and she started holding her hand to her ear, so I took her into the doc....and she has an ear infection. This would be her first, which I'm happy about, but of course she is now 0n anti-biotic (which should help her eyes also). They are so red and dry from all of the tearing up and wiping up...poor thing. So anyway, her energy has been down a little too, and I just thought I would wait until she was well before we started trying the whole potty training thing to its fullest. It involves some correction (practises) that can really make them mad or frustrated when they mess up, and I didn't want to have to implement that when she already feels so poorly.

But the good news is that, the next day when we put her back in diapers, she still showed interest in her potty and wanted to sit on if a few times...so I think it was a good experience for the two days we tried, and I'm hoping we will be able to jump back into things as soon as she is well with little resistance.

A blessing out of this is that Aloria is well aquainted with sick time, bed time rituals and doesn't fuss at all. I pull out the Vicks, and she points to her shirt (which is where I put it), and I rubb it on the bottom of her feet and then put her socks on...and then she points to the top of her bear's head, where I also apply a little, as she likes to snuggle her bear and is sure to get lots of vapors that way. She also takes all of her medicines without any problem. She likes the anti-biotic (bubble gum flavor), and doesn't mind the corn syrup either. As long as whatever I give her is offered her in one of those measuring suringy type things, she'll take it. She doesn't like the spoon...weird. Oh, yeah...the nurse said that if they have a bad cough you can give them 1/2 to 1 tsp. corn syrup to soothe and coat their throat (at least for her age), because they don't recommend any cough medicine for kids under 2. Several people I know use honey instead of corn syrup...but you can't give kids under age 1 honey (I think it's age 1...something like that).

...and as far as her being sick so much (like six times in the last 2 1/2 months), the nurse practitoner I saw said it is normal for her age. She said she is in a very hand to mouth/eye/face stage and so is likely to catch a lot of things, but probably won't be as sick next winter as she outgrows that. She also said that toddlers her age get sick 8-10 times a year and most of those times during the winter season. This makes me feel a little better because I was really worrying about her immune system, but the nurse also assured me that kids with immune dissorders look much more sickly then Aloria...and that's with her seeing her all goopy eyed and scabby nosed, so that is something to be thankful for. ...but because her body has gone through so much this winter, I think that I will still be limiting where I take her for a little longer (not that it's done me much good so far :-) ...but I'm her mommy, and mommy's don't give up trying to keep their kids healthy.