Self-taught

About two weeks ago, Rose woke up and decided that she was done with diapers. After a week of trial and error, she GOT it. Boom. That’s all. I don’t have a baby any more.

After trying to potty train Jay before he was ready (and the 2 months of appalling accidents that ensued) I was not even planning to put Rose on the potty until this fall, August at the earliest (when she turned two and a half years old). We had been letting her sit on the potty before bedtime every night for a few weeks before she abandoned her diapers, but I didn’t think it was really teaching her much. Wrong! One morning she freaked out when I said it was time for a diaper, and she hasn’t gone back since. How did I get that lucky?

We got her some My Little Pony undies, and she really has done all the work herself—she needed no treats or stickers or anything for motivation; she just wanted to be a big girl. Intrinsic motivation—I’ll take it! She’s even surprisingly coordinated at getting her pants on and off and climbing up and down from the potty. She wears a waterproof cover over her undies at bedtime, but it’s just a precaution—as long as I wake her up to pee before I go to bed around 10pm, she usually wakes up dry in the morning. I’ve been radio-silent through all of this out of fear that I’d jinx this. It seems too good to be true. But it’s not!

I think it’s safe to say that Rose is officially potty trained. She’s more used to the idea by now than I am. Cloth diapers take a certain amount of time, energy, and brainpower to keep in working order—washing, folding, timing the wash days, monthly extra washings to keep up absorbency, etc. There’s a small hole in my life where the cloth diapers used to be. How shall I fill it?

Actually, in the past few weeks I’ve been sewing rather more than is strictly necessary. I have no formal sewing training, just a whole lot of years of trial and error, heavy on the error. I learned so much from making that pioneer dress that I thought I’d remember it all better/improve more if I kept sewing while all the info was fresh in my brain. But I was not prepared to decipher another confusing pattern. Enter: Pinterest with its easy stretchy skirt ideas and the t-shirt repurposing dress. Sewing fabric onto the bottom of an old shirt is magic.

I took these pictures with my camera’s wink timer, so they are quite professional.

 

I wish I had made the waist a little higher on this one, but so far it’s not worth redoing.

 

This one worked out the best but I just used some old fabric out of my scrap box and a very old shirt, so it’s not as light or cheery as I’d like.

 

And the soft, stretchy skirt. Sinfully comfortable, ridiculously easy: 1.5 yards of knit fabric, sew down one side, fold and sew the top, insert elastic in the top, hem the bottom. ShaPOW. Skirt. 

Sewing won’t fill the diaper-void forever, but I think I’m adjusting already. I just wonder if I’ll have the courage to wear one of these dresses to church on Sunday.

We have two BIG KIDS