Eating

Learning to drink out of a cup.
It's just water, really.

Sterling went through a period of intensive eating in the last week or so. Several days in a row, she ate an entire banana. That statement should be taken with a grain of salt, though. When she "eats" food, not all of it makes it into her mouth. And even all of the food that makes it into her mouth doesn't actually get swallowed. However, she did eat a pretty substantial amount for a tiny squee of her magnitude.

She has a mesh bag thing that she likes to eat out of as well. I'm not entirely sure what makes it so appealing, but she'll eat a lot when we use it.

Here she's eating quinoa with curried yogurt with mango a pear. The Baby Led Weaning book says that it's ok to give her dairy in the form of yogurt or as milk cooked in things.

Sometimes, we combine our love of food
AND our love of potties!

She's been eating enough that she's started having grown-up solid poops. No more liquid breastmilk poo for this baby, she's moved up to tiny turdlets. Most mornings, she wakes up between 5 and 6am and we head into the bathroom where I put her on her potty seat on the toilet. Often, she'll have a poo (usually she fires off several warning farts in bed, which motivates me to get up). It's nice that the potty project is going well.

Potty time! Excellent!

Sterling has become quite adept at using the potty. As long as we offer her enough potty-tunities, we can catch most of the her pees and poos.

This morning, she started her usual bout of wiggling at about 7:00am. Remembering yesterday, when she was wet by the time I got her up and tried to potty her (and she didn't pee), I got up and tried to potty her in the bathroom. She was still mostly asleep and didn't go. We went back to bed. Twenty or so minutes later, she started wiggling with vigor and refused to be quieted with a boob. I figured she really had to potty now, but when I checked her diaper she was already wet. I thought I'd give her a try on the potty anyhow, since her wiggling had been so vigorous. She pooped almost immediately after being put on the potty! I sat her there for 5 or so minutes and she continued pooping, then she got antsy so I decided she was probably done. It was a total success. We caught the entire poo and she definitely communicated her need to go (which is the whole goal of the process). She also peed in the parking lot after I finished my walk today.

Potty Time!

We're doing Elimination Communication with Sterling. What that means is that we are trying to teach her to go in a little potty. At times when we think she's likely to potty, such as right when she's woken up from a nap, we put her on the potty and make Pshhhh Shhhh noises at her. Eventually she's supposed to associate the potty and the noise with going potty and she should basically potty on command. The other half of that is that we should eventually be able to recognize the cues she makes when she has to go.

We've had some success with getting her to occasionally pee on the potty. However, I've found that about equally commonly, she pees as soon as the diaper goes back on her after she's come off the potty. This could mean that we've trained her to pee in her diaper (as one would expect). We'll just have to untrain her again.

But today, she had her first poop in the potty! Admittedly, it was right after two other poops, but it still counts.