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My results....
Your IQ score is 131 !

You have a strong ability to process visual-spatial and mathematical information and this, combined with your logical mind, means you are a Visual Mathematician. You can manipulate multiple parts of the picture (or problem) to come up with a solution and can understand the "big picture," which is partly why people may turn to you for direction.

Like Einstein, your ability to detect patterns and your skills in maths and logic, make it natural for you to come up with ideas and theories that simplify processes for everyone.

.....and DH got 136.

I think the biggest problem is the expectation of perfection first time around.

My DD is walking and so at the moment all I see/hear is 'step, step, thud...step, step, thud' As she practices walking and in falling and learning she is getting better and more steady, until she walks perfectly (a way of yet)

Yet, the thought of letting a baby/toddler have more control over their eliminations and allow them to learn via mistakes, is derided by most parents It is seen as only acceptable to allow a child to use a potty when they won't make mistakes at 3/4 years old.

Since DD has started walking we have had more accidents (different pressure on her bladder, standing instead of crawling, sitting)and she is more interested in standing than sitting in a potty.

Despite this we still catch a fair few and the few wee misses are cleaned up quickly and she never sits in it, which is my goal.

We will continue to offer the potty and toilet and see how things go and I am determined to use trainer pants and real underwear more often, as Babychair prefers them, we have more catches and misses result in less washing

She did so well...

We started by edging one step at a time into the warm baby pool, I was wearing Babychair in our water sling (Pouch). She was nervous but splashed a bit and enjoyed the warm water.

When I took her out of the sling 10 minutes later, she clung to me for dear death. Both Deckchair and me took turns playing, holding Babychair and we both had a chance to go swimming in the bigger pool, to get a bit of much needed exercise.

No pictures, you aren't allowed to take pictures of your own child at a public swimming baths (PC rules gone mad ) So I'll have to dress her up at home to take pictures of her in her cute purple swimsuit and purple swim nappy

All the family had a great time and we aim to make this a weekly event

Just back from our local Asda, where I queued up at midnight for a copy of Harry Potter Book 7 for a fiver

The last words in the book are "All was well" and it has 607 pages.

Right off to read it

EDIT: Finished reading at 7pm

Really enjoyed reading this book, shame I had to rush it to avoid hearing the ending from another source, which would of been upsetting as I have been eagerly awaiting this last book in the series.

Without spoiling the book, I like to say I love the many battle scenes, was amazed with the many deaths and laughed at a fair few lines.I am sad that the books have finished but happy that I have another 'faithful' set of books to add to my other fantasy and sci fi books which I read and re-read.

Right, back to reading "All the Weyrs" by Anne McCaffery which I was half way though before I bought Harry Potter

After posting that my DD seemed to be going backwards with ECing, we seem to be having an iron bladder contest !!!

Serious, she has gone from weeing every hour or less, to weeing once every 4 or so hours !!!

I don't think it is a problem, when she does wee, we have a waterfall situation.

So either she is trying to control her bladder on purpose or she has got big enough that she can hold more wee at one go, or could it be something to do with my diet ?

I know this sounds stupid but I know children can be sensitive to the food they eat, could my DD react to things I eat?

In particular cows milk, I normally drink a lot in the morning and have some on cereal too and my DD usually wees a great deal. The last few days I have not had any cows milk and she is weeing a lot less and seems to be signalling more...am I mad or could there be a link ?

Interesting and thought prevoking ideas from the Big EC Yahoo List...In response to my worry of Going Backwards

I have a theory on this, so bear with me and take what you can (or just leave it altogether, I won't take offense).

I've noticed that there seems to be two times in a child's life with EC when problems arise. And I think that during both of these times, it is frustrating for the adults involved (and also for the child involved, but they can't tell you clearly) and with life being busy, it is easy to decide to put the diapers back on and wait until things improve. However, I would urge you to continue doing what you are doing - this time of discord is very important to the process and even though there may be more misses, this is a time of great strides for a child.

When your child begins to walk or talk, they stumble and stutter and make mistakes. You wouldn't see your child truggling to walk and then think - she's not ready to walk yet (cuz she isn't perfect at it yet), so I am going to confine her to a safe environment where she cannot walk and I will keep her there until she is ready to walk. Instead you do what you can to keep her safe while she stumbles and falls and learns to teeter and totter and finally eventually walk. She fails while she is learning and as parents we tolerate these failures because we know it is part of the learning process.

However, when it comes to the EC process and we've been having success, somehow as our child begins to learn that they are a part of the process and they can control both when and where they potty, parents become confused - why is there now failure when there has been so much success? I think what we fail to realize is that our measure of success needs to change at this point.

Children learn how long they can hold the contents of their bladder by holding it so long, they can't hold it any longer. They are in touch with the elimination process, they know what it feels like when their bladder is full, but what they don't know is - how long can I wait before it is too late? They get involved with other activities and they don't want to stop, even if they have that full bladder feeling. They may be involved in this experimentation process when, based on timing or intuition, an adult decides to potty the child - who protests vehemently. Then as soon as you take the child off the potty, they realize that they have exceeded their potty-holding limit and they pee on the floor. The adult reaction is frustration - why is this happening? But in fact, the learning process is happening. And this is a great time to continue your communication with your child - "Oh, you are peeing. Next time, if you let me know, I can help you put it in the potty." Very low key.

So my theory is that this part of the learning process happens some time between 9 and 12 months. What we did during this time was try a few different locations (bblp, then sink with mirror, regular toilet with insert, then outdoors), we were trying to distract her from her bladder holding experiment long enough for her to pee. If she peed, great, if not, we used either diaper back up, or we put her on some sort of impervious surface, or lived dangerously, knowing that we'd be cleaning up a miss in the near future.

Sometimes she surprised us and held it much longer than we suspected that she could - and we both learned. Sometimes she peed almost as soon as we let her go back to her chosen activity - and we both learned. The process smoothed back out again for a time, but our success rate was probably never as high as it had been before dd learned that she could delay the inevitable, if it suited her.

Then between 14 and 16 months, the misses begin to increase again and for us this was the real key to our daughter graduating. She became very resistant to us ECing based on timing (which we had done from birth with her). And we had been signing with her and talking with her about elimination throughout our journey, at this stage she was really acting out that she wanted control over this part of her life. It resulted in quite a few misses, but instead of diapering
her back up and waiting until later when we thought she was ready, we gave her MORE control, instead of less. We would ask her if she had to potty (when we thought she should have to go, or if we were heading out for a trip) and if she gave us a negative response, we would believe her (even if we were skeptical) - we allowed her the ability to have confidence in knowing her body. Even if, sometimes, it turned out that she was wrong, the amount of time that it too
her to realize that this was her thing and we were no longer the ones in control of where and when she pottied...she was completely diaper free within one month and about two and half months later, she is completely miss free.

I'm not saying that this time table will apply to everyone, my point is just this:

When a child who is on the EC journey has a series of misses, instead of considering it a "potty pause" maybe consider it as part of the process and that the child is really expressing that they realize they are part of this process and support that, instead of backing off and diapering them up and waiting - sending them mixed signals that they aren't trusted to learn this skill because it is simply too messy.

Here's hoping that this sentiment isn't too controversial. I trust that you will find the right path for you and your child and
whatever you decide to do will be the best thing. This too will pass and you will both be triumphant (and closer for having having these experiences together).

Peace,
Chaos

My DD is just coming up to 11 months (ECed from 10 weeks).

We have had or ups and downs but I swear we are very slowly going backwards. Before she could crawl, we had all poos and 90% of wees in the potty, the 10% miss rate down to me being slow to pick up on her signals/too busy.

After I had been in hospital recently I had to work hard at getting back in sync with my DD which we did for all poos and some wees (maybe 25%) and I thought I had found the right place to potty, i.e. The big toilet and that we were communicating more.

But since she has started walking and talking more, we are not communicating at all. I can not see any signals before her eliminations and relay totally on timing and we seem to be missing everything.

Just now I actually had a poo in her trainer pants !!! A poo, I can't remember the last time I had to scrape poo out of a pair of pants. I knew straight away she had done it, so thank god she wasn't sat in it, or she would develop a terrible rash.

My wonderful DD does walk/crawl towards me when I think she needs to go. However she doesn't want to be held, use potty and we have a potty chair and a little bjorn downstairs (tried in different positions and different rooms) or the big toilet. Often wet pants just as she gets to me or straight after refusing a potty.

I am wondering if this is linked to her walking and talking. Maybe she feels different standing and doesn't recognise when she wants to go or the pressure is different on her bladder?

Today we have had one poo and three wee misses and it is only teatime, though she was dry/clean for both naps and two journeys out of the house whilst she was being worn in one of our wraps.

I was planning to try real underwear and be braver using trainer pants more outside the house but now I am wondering if we should go back more to nappies until I figure out what I should be doing at this moment ?

So really I am looking for some encouragement. Any ideas on things to do, or should I keep trying different potty places/timing until something starts to work ? Would you go back to nappies, or stay with trainer pants or go to real pants.

Pants as in tiny knickers

Babychair has been wearing trainer pants since she was 5 months old and we thought it time that we tried real pants at home to start with. But where can you find knickers to fit an 10 month old baby ?

I was cleaning out Babychair's little clothes and bagging it all up to go into the loft, when I came across the smaller frilly knickers, she used to wear over her nappy when she was a tiny tot. The smallest pants were from Mothercare (Tiny Baby up to 7.5lbs) which I bought in error as she was never that tiny

I tried them on Babychair and look....


...they fit her perfectly

So I'm off tomorrow to buy a few more pairs and we can use them at home, when a wee miss is no problem. I am going to try and be braver about using trainer pants outside the house, as she hardly ever has an accident when I wear her and she doesn't try to take her trainer pants off, like she does with the nappies. Lastly I am going to save her pocket nappies for naps/nighttime.

Bonus picture of Babychair using a small dustpan and brush, see she copies me...therefore I must clean the house...QED

Ahhh...

After weeks for Babychair pointing at things and mumbling something understandable followed by 'At'. It finally clicked that she meant..'What's that ?' A phrase that we often use to her and she has realised the advantage of information gathering.


We have things point out to us constantly wherever we go, followed by "What's that ?" in baby speech chirped at us from every angle...she is so sweet.

She sat on her potty !!!

By that I mean she stood up took two steps turned around and sat on her potty by herself. Especially amazing as she has show a big dislike to the potty recently and I have been taking her upstairs to the big toilet.

Fair enough she got straight up but she did it !!!

I'm so proud of her

Our precious baby girl is walking !!!

I can not believe it, at 10.5 months our little girl is walking on her own

Babychair vocab is increasing weekly.We currently have 'Daddy', 'Mummy', 'Mu mu' for food, 'at' and 'Ccat' for cat and 'Hiya' for hello.

She also has started copying sounds in particular 'Eh I Eh I Oh' in Old Macdonalds song and other words we say.

Sometimes she tells me a sentence in all seriousness and I don't understand her...it must be confusing for her but she doesn't seem to mind...bless her

Babychair is so close to walking...she stands on her own holding toys and giggles. She can even crouch to the floor and stand again without losing her balance but she needs to hold onto something to walk.

We need to keep the camcorder nearby just in case, as I think we will be posting a walking video soon

As you know we potty (EC) Babychair and have done since she was 10 weeks old.

Whilst I have been ill/in hospital/recovering recently Babychair has been in her cloth nappies pretty much full time and although my parents and DH offered her some potty times, they are not as in tune with Babychair as much as I am.

Since I recovered and have been offering more potty times, Babychair started pooing all the time on the potty like before but has shown little interest in the using the potty for wee (we have just been catching the post nap ones only). So I was wondering if she had given up and become diaper trained whilst I was sick, which made me sad.

But then I remembered that I had bought a toilet seat reducer and stored it away as Babychair wanted nothing to do with it at that time.

So I fitted that to our big toilet upstairs and in the last three hours I have witnessed two poos and two wees in the toilet…hopefully that is what she needed, a quiet place with no distractions of toys within sight. I think it also helps that she can't get down herself, so she has a moment to think do I want a wee. Of course I will take her down the moment she asked , I wouldn't upset her in that way. But I think downstairs is far too much fun to slow down and sit on a boring potty.

The first poo was followed by me helping her flush the toilet and I held her so she could watch the poo disappear…she waved goodbye to the poo and said `Hiya'…bless her. She only has a five word vocab and doesn't know goodbye yet

In conclusion I'm off to buy a Little Baby Bjorn Toilet reducer for use outside the house and I hope we can continue to potty Babychair by using the big toilet all the time. It is a pain having to go upstairs every time she wants a wee but it is wonderful having no potties to empty and clean too