Elimination Communication day 4…

Well the good news is Max is dry for naps and bedtime. The bad news is he isn’t dry the rest of the time. 🙁 We got the book on 3 day potty training though and they have a mentoring program. So I wrote them yesterday (at the point where I seriously thought that Max will be going to college in diapers) and they gave me some tips that will hopefully work for us. So hopefully those will work for us today.

You know it is funny, when we only had one car (which was the case our whole married life till about a month prior to loosing Emily) I didn’t have problems with staying home all day for days on end. Right now I would rather be ANYWHERE other then here. I guess that is just part of this. They were out of the milk we normally drink at the grocery store over the weekend though, so I will need to go out tonight and get that. That will give me some me time tonight.

I was asked how the 3 day potty training works. We keep him in underwear all day and night. This is to make him realize that he needs to stay dry with clothes on. So we have about 20 pairs of underwear for him. Then this is all about catching accidents, and TONS of positive reinforcement. The most frustrating part for me is that you really can’t do anything else when this is going on. I have had 6 months of not being able to do things so a few more days, while I thought would be easy, isn’t so much for me. However that seems to be the hardest part.

I was asked about how Fenway and Max separation went. It went okay. Max clearly loves playing with Fenway or “Fe” as Max calls him. Fenway was only away from the family for a couple of days because his stool hardened. At that point we were able to give him a bath and let him play with us.

I was also asked how hard it is to take care of Fenway and his coat and such. He gets brushed about twice a week, and he has a lot of Cavalier in him so he doesn’t mind very much. We also brush his teeth about twice a week right now, and we hope to clean his ears about that often as well. He doesn’t like the ears being cleaned but it only takes about a minute so he puts up with it.

I should also add that Fenway is more of an apartment dog. He really is happy with just a couple of long walks and that meets all of his exercise requirements. That is one of the reasons why we choose this breed. I didn’t want a dog that would go crazy if we couldn’t take them out as much as we like because of the dramatic weather changes. Like right now it is way to hot to really even be outside, and in the winter we have days that are too cold to be outside. I wanted to add that 3 of the other litter mates of Fenway are still available. You can find them here.

Well I best be getting back to Max. He was eating and sitting on the couch this whole time I have been writing. He doesn’t seem to have any accidents while seated so hopefully  that will bode well for the car eventually.

Talk to you later!
Jennifer

2 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    Hi Jennifer,

    So glad that you can play with Fenway again. Max must be thrilled to have his buddy back.

    Good luck with the potty training. I’ve never tried to train one of my daycare children so young so I am anxious to hear how it goes. I imagine persistence is the answer.

    While you are having a heat wave we are all “cold” here in Southern CA. We were at the beach for the Fourth of July and never even saw the sun! It doesn’t look like today is any better. We live several miles inland and only had partial clearing yesterday. Don’t know what is going on. The good thing is we haven’t had to use our airconditioner so the bill won’t be so bad!

    Have a great day. Hopefully it will be potty accident free.

    Rowena

  2. Anonymous

    When a child is not ready (and seeing that Max isn’t even two yet, he is not) then they won’t train easily.

    My son turned three in March and I never did any type of training…One day he just said “I’m done” and he was.

    He really is quite young still.

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