My parents-in-law were kind enough to help out during my first few weeks after giving birth, by babysitting Joel and Ezra for a couple of weeks. To help us adjust to our newest addition, they offered to care for Joel for another couple of months. The catch? Joel will have to follow them to Sandakan for the whole duration. That’s hundreds of miles away!

It wasn’t easy for me to decide, but it wasn’t so hard, either. It reminded me of my economics class, specifically on opportunity cost, i.e. the cost of sacrificing one need in order to satisfy another need (or at least that’s what I remember it loosely defined as). I know that I will miss Joel like crazy as in weeping daily thinking about adorable little jovial him. I also realize, though, that I needed the time and energy to recuperate from all those physical, emotional and mental roller coaster after delivery. I would also save on daycare expenses while he’s on vacation, which is good in a way

Gratefully, yet heavy-heartedly, I agreed, while mentioning to my in laws that I am going to miss Joel dearly until he returns. They understood. The last I heard from Joel, he was jumping up and down at his uncle Jason’s house en route to Sandakan. Didn’t bother him one bit that he wasn’t at home with mommy and daddy. I’m OK with it.

Joel and his ah-kung (grandpa) and ah-po (grandma) will come back around September, just in time for the Aidilfitri (Eid) holidays. I can’t wait to see him again.

See you soon, dearest Joel! Mommy and Daddy and Eric miss you!

(I scheduled this post to a later date, so this update might actually be a few weeks off the original timeline)

It has been three weeks since I used the baby sign language book I just purchased. I only watched the DVD once. I haven’t opened the quick guide that comes with it. Ezra and especially Joel absolutely loved the little baby signs book for the pictures. However, one time Joel was holding the book and somehow managed to get his face sliced off a bit from the sides of the book, sort of what you get with a paper cut. I decided to put the books away for a while, but I’ll be putting them out again some time later.

As for the signs themselves, it’s still a learning stage for all three of us. Currently I’m focusing on only a few signs that I think are critical to lessen Ezra’s meltdowns. Those are drink, eat, milk, bath and finish/all done. I haven’t seen one indication from either Joel or Ezra so far. I’m not so worried about Joel now. His articulation is getting better. Ezra still gets frustrated when I can’t read what he wants. I showed and repeated the baby signs to him, to which he doesn’t respond. Then when he wails, of course my stress levels go up, and I stress out quite easily.

He does try to speak a few words, like mommy, habis (finish), daddy, and a few more, but not the other important words like milk, drink and eat. I guess I’ll have to wait a couple more months to see if I can communicate better with Ezra using the baby sign language.

Both Joel and I woke up on a Sunday morning with no accident. Yes! He was dry! Half an hour after we woke up, he told me that he needed to go pee.

For the whole day, the challenge was to keep ME focused on Joel. There were SO much I wanted or had to do — clean the floor, the kitchen, do the laundry, cook, taking care of the rest of the kids, on top of catching up with much needed rest — this little one in my tummy wasn’t getting any smaller.

That was where I started relapsing for a few hours. And that was when Joel had a poo accident. Not pleasant. A few deep breaths, though, and I rushed Joel to the toilet, made sure that he really has finished his job, then reminded him once again what he should do. Thank God for baby wipes, they really made cleaning easier. I showed Joel the poo that I cleaned, expressed my yucky face and threw it into the toilet bowl while he watched and hear me reminded him yet again.

I did one different thing that day, after re-reading the 3 Day Potty Training again. I started to praise Joel much more excitedly and loudly every time he successfully tells me he wanted to pee and did his job as he was suppose to. I think that would help reinforce things a bit more.

This was the end of my potty training with Joel. At least in the end, I managed to train Joel to tell me whenever he wants to pee. I didn’t quite remember what else I did differently on the third day as well as the next day (Monday, which I took an leave from work), except for keeping in my effort to focus, focus, focus. I think I was the one who struggled more than Joel. I don’t remember Joel having any day time accidents, either, but just during the early morning when he just woke up. Again, I’m having issues getting him to pee after he had just woken up, and he did complain every time he was put on the kiddie toilet seat when he’s still groggy from sleep.

All in all, though, choosing a potty training program and accessories are definitely more challenging that picking and choosing pontiac accessories, even though not as expensive. This post needs an epilogue. I’ll report what happens after a month.

I kept re-reading the 3 Day Potty Training e-book just in case I missed something. I was a little bit stressed out because of the anxiety I put on myself. I’ve been asking myself all day — what’s next after this 3-day potty training? What can I expect? That Joel goes to pee in the toilet every time? That he doesn’t poo in his pants? What??

In the mean time, Joel seems to be doing okay. I kept reminding Joel to tell me when he needs to pee, like, every other minute. My exact words were, “Tell mommy when you want to pee, OK?”, instead of “Do you want to pee now?”, which the 3 Day Potty Training book told not to do. So, he told me he wants to pee every time he felt like peeing. No accident until night time, except once when he took his afternoon nap. He didn’t wake up in time to rush to the toilet. He seemed to have a problem waking up when he has the urge to go to the loo, so that didn’t help ease my anxiousness one bit. But it’s only the second day, I tell myself. It’s OK. I didn’t want to transfer my stress and anxiety to him. I just calmly told him to tell me the next time he wants to pee, and not pee in his pants.

He didn’t want to drink much, either. I’m suspecting that he had tied two and two together; more water equals more peeing, so he lessened his drinking so that he didn’t have to go pee so often. Again, I stressed out about it after noticing that he didn’t go to the loo for almost 5 hours. After a while, though, I told myself that what matters most is that he goes to the toilet when it was time, so I chilled back, calmed myself down a bit, told myself he has good bowel control, and just went on with my routine as what the book advised.

So that’s pretty much what happened on Saturday, or what I would call Day 2. Again, I can’t really call it Day 2 because I only started Friday night before.

I woke up at 3am that morning to the sound of my hubby telling me that Joel has just peed on the bed. I had a mattress laid out in the living room of my apartment, and while my hubby dealt with the wetness in the bedroom, I took Joel out to the living room. I didn’t take him to the toilet that time.

When Joel woke up at 6am, he had another accident. This time I rushed him to the toilet, hoping that I had just caught him in the middle of peeing. Nothing came out, meaning that he was done. Sigh. I reminded him to pee in the toilet instead of anywhere else. He didn’t seem to care as we was still halfway awake.

I took the chance to re-read the e-book I printed out. Oops. There were a few things that I overlooked and didn’t follow. I was suppose to have him in underwear so that he can feel how uncomfortable his poop or pee is. It’s also a good way for him to signal to me — whenever he has the urge, he just goes to me and pull his pants down while saying “shee-shees?” and I’ll know that he wants to pee. So I started doing so.

Another oopsie I did was to ask him if he wants to go pee. What I was suppose to do is to instruct him to tell me if he wants to go. So that’s another little change of strategy. Now I instruct him to tell me if he needs to go shee-sheesh, but I still did it like every other minute or so. He looked like he was ignoring me every time I said it, but at least I know that I’m reminding him constantly.