True Love

I was out of town for much of last week.  This meant that my dear husband was sole caretaker of the 500 Babies for 3 1/2 days.  I didn't care what happened to the house; all I asked was that he sweep the kitchen floor at least once a day. But when I returned, not only had he kept the house tidy, he also got caught up on the laundry.  I'm talking washing, drying, folding, AND putting it away.  He also managed to take all four kids to Home Depot by himself.  I can only imagine what that must have looked like! Oh, I almost forgot - there is one more thing Billy happened to do while I was away... 

HE POTTY-TRAINED THE WONDER TWINS!  Sorry for yelling.  But holy smokes, people - do you get this??  My husband single-handedly potty-trained two toddlers.  We've both made attempts to train them over the past several months, but this time he really got serious.  And it worked.

How'd he do it?  Well, I think the main thing is he gave Daniel and Mikea lots of praise when they had successes and stayed positive even when they had the inevitable accidents.  The first couple of days he gave them lots of water and made them go to the potty every 15 minutes.  Joe helped by being in charge of the timer and helping Daniel in the upstairs bathroom if Mikea was using the one downstairs.  We had been giving the kids candy sprinkles as rewards, but Billy nixed that and reverted back to sticker charts.  But the genious part, at least to me, is that he didn't bother using a chart with days of the week and boxes.  He just stuck paper on the wall and let the kids pick their own stickers - 1 sticker for wee-wee and 2 stickers for you-know-what.  When the charts were filled up they celebrated by going out for ice cream.  Yum!

He also played "The Potty Dance" for them over and over and over. Another gimmick Billy used was to hang up their underwear on the clipboards in the kids' bedrooms.  He did this during naptimes.  I think it was just another way to get them excited about wearing underwear.  Of course the underwear had to be clean and dry for to this happen.

Today, both Daniel and Mikea are initiating going to the bathroom on their own and most days are completely accident-free.  We're going to keep practicing and practicing and I'm thinking that very soon we will be ready to ditch the diapers for good! 

Another outcome of Billy's time alone with the kids was a better understanding of what I go through on a daily basis.  He's always been supportive and appreciative of me for staying home with them.  But now that he's experienced it first-hand he knows exactly what I mean when I say there are days when I want to just go into the laundry room and shut the door to get away from the madness.  But I also know that he bonded even more with the kids during my days away.  Billy told me his favorite moment was one evening when Joe walked over to him, plunked himself on the floor and said, "You're my best buddy, Daddy."  Amen, Joe!  He's my best buddy, too.