golden's sunny self, and discussion on baby poop

a little progress note on the newest mcdonnell! i have written about sparrow so much, and this IS supposed to be primarily a family journal, so i can't neglect to write about the cutenesses of golden as well.

she is such a precious child of God. she is clever and charming. she has gotten really smiley lately and likes to gurgle and coo gently. she smiled for the first time at 3 weeks! she is now noticing when someone comes into the room, and has started to "track" people with her eyes. Golden has slept til 5 or 6 am several times already! yessssss. it depends on how soon she last nursed or pooped before bedtime. honestly i think her bowel movements more often wake her up than does hunger.

i have been attempting to infant potty-train, which has been really interesting: I try to be in tune with her body language enough to notice when she is pooping. then i take her diaper off quickly and set her over a little pot (old yogurt container) and i say her trigger word. "doo doo!" reminiscent of a dog, i know, but this is the trigger word used by the pearls in the book that 1st introduced me to the concept of infant potty training, and well, i was too lazy to make up my own. so doo doo it is. except sparrow seems to find this word highly amusing, and now she runs around gleefully exclaiming "doo doo! doo doo!" which is obviously going to render the trigger ineffective! i have been trying to explain to her that that is mommy's word and that she should call it poopy. now she says when golden is doing her thing, "DOO DOO!... poopy! i said poopy!" hhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaha. so accommodating.

the idea of the trigger word is that eventually Golden will associate it so much with pooping that i'll be able to set her on the pot and say it, and then she will go, not the other way around. usually she takes quite awhile to push it all out, with long breaks in between; which is why it's so challenging. (well, one of the reasons.) she tends to pee right after she is done pooping, and i have a separate trigger for peeing: "psssssssssssssss." but the pooping is the main issue.

i got a few more ideas for helping her along yesterday while reading ina may's guide to childbirth. she describes a technique for helping a woman in labor to relax her leg muscles, which in turn relaxes her sphincters. you shake or roll the muscles of her thighs and butt. germans call this "shaking the apples." i love germans. anyways, so i thought, what if it helps to relax the cervix-sphincter, it probably helps relax the anal one also! i have started grunting along with her too, because for laboring women it helps to get down and make the noises with them. bingo. now i just treat golden in her b.m. like a woman in labor and it has been much funner (and effective?) ever since.

another idea i got for saving money on diapers was to use cloth diapers and hand wash them. this was made possible by thomas' brother sending down all their daughter's recently outgrown all-in-ones. i never would have been able to afford the initial cost of buying the diapers, so i am really excited that i got some free ones. however, i am beginning to doubt that i will actually be able to accomplish this hand washing. it is already more than i can handle to spray and wash the stained clothes before it's too late. what am i thinking!?! i can't keep the bedroom picked up, the kitchen swept, or the living room vacuumed, yet i am going to sit and scrub diapers every night during my free time? ...well, i am ambitious, i guess, and eager to do my part to help save money. my excuse for not having started doing this yet is that i will need a fairly large tub where i can soak the diapers in vinegar til they are ready to be dried (so they don't get mildewy). i could do a dryer load every 3 days or so and still save a bunch of money. so we haven't gotten me my tub yet. waiting to pay the major october bills first. gotta keep these priorities straight, you know. rent before pooping gadgets.