Big Boy

It seemslike whenever I crow about something on here, it has a mysterious way of ceasing. So, I have been understandably reluctant to write the following two sentences. Sam has been using the potty on a regular basis. He's also been sleeping through the night for about a week.

First, the sleeping thing. He'd been sleeping through about every 3rd or 4th night, and I really felt like the times he was waking up to nurse had become more of a want than a need. I also needed more sleep. So, we decided that Mark would take over night comforting duties, and we would tell Sam that "Na-na's are asleep now - you can nurse when it's day." It took about 5 nights of various degrees of protest, but I never felt like he was being deprived of something he absolutely needed. And, on the 6th day, he slept. For 9 hours. I should add that because it's summer, "day" appears in our window around 5 in the morning, so to get a full night's sleep we've needed to go to bed earlier. But, the hours in a row have been nice, and at the 5:00 mark I hear "It's day! You can nurse?" and he crawls into bed next to me. That morning nurse has gotten pretty long to make up for it, but that's fine with me.

And now, the potty! I'd heard that M&Ms work magic, so we thought we'd try it - one for a pee-pee, and two for a poop. Seriously, that kid is MOTIVATED. You'd think we never give him chocolate. For the last few days, I've had about one wet diaper a day and no poop. He even used our big potty with his little seat on it. He always tells me if he needs to go, and on one occasion he managed to hold it until we got home. Is he a potty savant? The one owwry I have is that he's doing it for the chocolate, and not the pride of being a big boy. But then I realized: I don't really care. The next step is to get him excited about "big-boy pants." I think that will be a Mark thing.

So, here's the funny thing about both of these things, and maybe another reason I've been reluctant to write about this. As much as I complained about getting up at night, and as dismal as changing and washing diapers and wiping a bottom can be, I sort of...miss it. It's weird. I thought I'd be jumping up and down, and I mostly am. But there's a part of me that realizes that he's growing up and needing me less, and that in the grand scheme of things, the amount of time that he did need me so intensely was so short and precious. I know they tell you that, and you don't believe them when you're in the thick of it...but it's true.