It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Tommy update and I’ve been getting a ton of questions so I thought I’d share a little update on the things you guys are interested in.
Huge disclaimer: I am a first time mom. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just doing the best I can. This post is not meant to be a “This is how you should do it!” but rather “This is what we’re doing and it’s working or it’s not.” Personal adventures are welcome in the comments!
Things That Have Helped Us
Tommy is a typical 2-year-old. He has a hard time with transitions. For example, he used to have a fit if we took away the iPad from him to go take a bath or leave for school. Now, we give him a countdown or warning.
“Five minutes,” is what we say to him to let him know we will be changing our activity. He now tells us 5 minutes but after whatever we deem to be 5 minutes, which is usually between 3 and 20 (lol), he is great at transitioning and does so without a fight. It’s amazing how easy he is when we do it right. When I give him a screen to make him happy, like when he has to ride in the stroller, I tell him he can use it for 5 minutes. After “5 minutes” he let’s me have the screen back. We also use this at the playground to get him out of the damn swing.
Instead of 5 minutes, sometimes we will say one more time or last time.
Similarly, we will say, “First we are going to put on your shoes, then I will give you an M&M.” The ‘First, Then’ scenario plays out well when we want him to do something, like put on his shoes. Another example, “First we are going to go pee, and then we are going to go to the park.”
Potty Training
This is probably the most popular question I get about Tommy on Instagram. We are good with pee. He only wears a diaper for naps and bedtime. Tommy hasn’t had a pee accident in a really long time. I can’t remember to be honest when the last one was! We encourage him to go before we leave the house and bribe him occasionally with Unreal candy coated chocolates aka healthier M&M’s. He occasionally will I say, “I need a diapee,” which is his way of saying I have to use the potty.
I bring around with me this portable 2 in 1 potty from OXO which helps when we are out and about.
Number 2 is another animal. The book I used to potty train Tommy, Oh Crap, has an entire chapter on it and I keep meaning to read it. When he is commando, he never has an accident with either #1 or #2. We bought underwear after a month for him to start wearing and he has had a couple #2 accidents while wearing them because they feel like a diaper almost. He used the potty twice to go #2 in the first week and hasn’t again since. Perhaps the problem is the fact that even on my blog I’m calling it #2 instead of what it really is, poop.
He started holding it and going at night once he had his night time diaper on. He requests a diapee when he has to go and I reluctantly give it to him because I don’t want to deal with the situation of having him need to go to the hospital because he is backed up. I know two children that this happened to. I’m honestly not sure how to break him of this because he gets very upset if he doesn’t have a diaper and won’t sit on his potty even though he knows he has to go. Any advice, please share it below.
Here is my full post on potty training after 1 week including the method and why we did it.
Preparing For Baby
A lot of you also were curious how we are preparing Tommy for the arrival of his baby brother. Aside from teaching him the baby’s name and where he currently resides, we aren’t really doing much. When we see his friends at the park who have siblings, I try to tell him he is going to have a baby brother soon. I don’t think he has any idea and I haven’t had a minute to think about what we should be doing differently if anything at all!
There is one thing that bring me to my next point…
Transitioning Into a Big Boy Bed
We are going to go straight into a twin bed. Tommy will share a room with his brother but that won’t happen until January as the baby will be with us until then. Therefore we could theoretically keep him in his crib but we want to get him to sleep in a regular bed for a few reasons:
#1. He won’t sleep in a pack and play so for travel, it’s always stressful.
#2. I’m planning to spend a lot of time in the Cape after the baby arrives and there is no crib that can contain Tommy from climbing out.
#3. I don’t want to deal with transitioning him while having a baby who still wakes up in the middle of the night to nurse. It sounds like surviving on negative sleep.
We were planning to get a bed for his room this month but seeing as it’s almost over and we haven’t yet, it’s on the agenda for May! He sleeps 7/7:30- 6/7 am and rarely gets up in the middle of the night. I don’t want to lose this precious shut eye time for myself.
Some tips we have heard are to get sheets with his favorite characters and we also will be sure to get a railing for the bed. If you have tips on this, let me know.
Toddler Eating Habits
I swore my child would love healthy food and he does just not the kind I had hoped. He is not into vegetables sadly. I try making smoothies, putting them in eggs, but unless it’s roasted with all the salt and pepper seasoning or pureed in pizza sauce, he is not a fan. The few vegetables he enjoys are roasted cauliflower, avocado, sweet potatoes and corn. I don’t know if I’d categorize the last three really as vegetables but I’ll take it.
I can usually get him to have some form of vegetable in a pouch, like the Stonyfield yogurts or fruit purees. He hates the baby purees but the ones that look like apple sauce are ok.
The thing with Tommy is that what he likes today may be totally different tomorrow! He changes his mind very often.
He loves fruit. That is one good thing. Frozen mango and pineapple are great because I put them in his lunch box and by the time lunch rolls around, it’s thawed. He likes apples and bananas these days. He loves watermelon when I actually buy it and strawberries have to be perfectly ripe and organic.
He also loves almond and peanut butter as well as cashews.
For lunch at school, I’ll do a fruit, a chip/snack of some sort like Annie’s Bunnies or Baked Peas with a sun butter sandwich on whole wheat sourdough. I’ll throw in some cheese sometimes, too. Occasionally he will eat the roasted broccoli from Trader Joe’s if I put it in or roasted chick peas.
For dinner, Tommy loves homemade pizza, currently pasta with lots of parmesan cheese, sometimes chicken nuggets with roasted sweet potatoes, sometimes turkey meatballs, salsa chicken with roasted corn, pita chips with hummus, sometimes an egg… This will all probably change next week.
We get the Earth’s Best chicken nuggets. There are turkey meatballs at Whole Foods that are made with vegetables and we get those but I can’t remember the name! For pasta, I mix a regular kind that look like dinosaurs with a kind that has protein like Banza or Trader Joe’s Quinoa pasta. I make my own roasted sweet potatoes and other vegetables. Too many french fry type bags have spices that Tommy finds “spicy.”
I wish I made these deluxe homemade meals but being pregnant, 5 pm is like my zero energy time and I just don’t have the motivation to make him a meal from scratch.
Pushing
Tommy is in a total pushing phase. It kills me. I don’t know what to do about it. I need to be better about discipline but half the time he does it is because he just wants to play and I just don’t feel like the Time Out works and punishing him by leaving the park, punishes me because now I’m at home with a TV and a 2 year old that just wants to watch it instead of enjoying the good weather we finally have!
I’m told it’s a phase. I’m nervous it will be bad especially when the baby arrives and it’s hard to constantly shadow your child to make sure he doesn’t lay a finger on another kid. I don’t want to helicopter but I feel like I have to.
This is something I really have no clue as to what I’m doing. I feel like this whole post is like that. I think it’s called first time parenting problems but I don’t want to be some blogger spewing out advice that I have no idea about. If your child had a pushing phase, how long did it last and what tips worked for you?
