Big Boy, Ollie

Over the past couple of weeks, Oliver has decided that he is ready to be a big boy. I have been asking him for a month or so if he wants to pee in the potty. He always just said, "no, thanks" and asked for a diaper. Put then, one morning when I asked him if he wanted to pee-pee on the potty he said, "Yes" and then he just walked over to his little potty, sat himself down on it, and peed. And then for the rest of the day, I left his diaper off and he used the potty all day, except for nap and bed time! And he's been using the potty ever since that day. Although, he has to be naked on the bottom half. He's asked me a few times to take his diaper off so he can go potty, but he's not as on top of it if he's not bottomless. Still. I'm very well pleased in his efforts! He even got so he was helping me dump his little potty into the big potty. That's occassionally messy, but very helpful and grown up of him! His potty chart is getting so full of stickers!

Then, he decided to take another big boy step. When I asked him if he wanted to sleep in a big boy bed, he again said, "yes." We have a couple of extra twin mattress in our apartment, so I pulled one out of the closet and laid it on the floor for him. That is our current version of a big boy bed and is the best we've got for right now, but he doesn't mind. And actually, it's probably a good thing while he's learning. Not very far to fall.

He was so excited when I dropped the mattress to the floor and he got to start piling his stuff up on his new big boy bed. He was happily jumping and playing on it. Then it was nap time. We did the usual routine and then I put him on his bed and left. For the first few minutes he was fine, but then he started crying and saying, "no, thanks big boy bed!" over and over. After about 15 or 20 minutes, he got quiet. So, I went in to check on them. Dexy was sleeping peacefully in his bed.

When I looked over for Ollie, this is what I found..

an empty big boy bed. He was nowhere to be found on or near the bed, so I looked around. And where was he?

Sleeping on the floor in front of the door. He probably just finally fell asleep there after all of his crying at the door for me to open it and let him out. Later he woke up crying, probably because he was numb from sleeping on the floor, so I put him on his bed and he went back to sleep just fine. Then that night, there was less trouble. He only cried a little. And the next day at nap time, he was fine. I went in and found him sleeping on the bed and everything!

Dexy was again sleeping happily. He has developed quite the amazing sleeping power! He sleeps through so much of Ollie's talking to himself, crying, pounding on the door, etc. Although Dexy cries less, Ollie's does pretty good sleeping through stuff, too. Now they just need to learn how to sleep through they terrible allergies that we're having out here.

He actually had very little trouble making the switch. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner because he's been climbing out of his playpen for months now anyway and I've been kind of worried about him hurting himself climbing out in the middle of the night. I guess I didn't want to keep changing so many things on him all at once, but he likes it, so it's all ok.