drippy drawers

Supposedly Charlie was potty trained this past summer up in Maine, right after he turned 3. However, a great deal of the training was on my part, remembering every 20 minutes throughout the day to bark, "Charlie-go potty!" and swing him up onto the toilet. Despite all this he has been wetting his pants at least once a day, usually only seconds after he squeaks, "I gotta go." He has wet in stores, outside, and this past Friday wet his pants a record 7 times before bedtime. With all of Saturday's activities I decided to put him in a Pull-Up and found that he only dampened them once the whole day. Sunday Mass I tried the diapers again and was surprised again at his dry state most of the day.

It is such a relief to not be in hyper-vigilant mode about urinary issues that I am considering sticking him back in diapers for a few weeks or months. None of the older children had accident after accident, in fact Will was trained in 3 days. The girls were both about 3 as well, and while I recall some nasty scenes out with Maggie, within a few months they were both good to go. I worry about Mary on the other scale, she can go 5 hours without needing to go potty, maybe she got the lifeboat size bladder while Charlie got the teacup size.

All this goes to show me that I learned the perfect way to raise children before I gave birth, learned that each child is different after the 3rd kid, and realize that I know nothing about rearing children now that I have 5. Perhaps I will be reinstated with expert status if/when we have a 6th child, but somehow I feel that that baby would throw me for a loop too!