2014 Family Vacation Recap

Our family took our first family cruise with three of the four children this summer.  Everyone breathe a sigh of relief with me that it is over.

Sigh...

I have heard people say before that they need a vacation from their vacation and I have never really felt anything like that, until my vacation with toddlers.  We took a vacation a few years ago with two pre-teens and that is awesome because even though there is attitude, they are able to go and do things and not rely on you 100% for absolutely everything.  Toddlers need you for absolutely everything.  Combine that with my constant concern that they were going to fall overboard and you have the most stressful vacation on record for me ever.

It's not to say that it wasn't awesome.  Hubby and I have never been on this exact cruise before and we still had a number of different and great experiences than we have ever had on previous cruises.  Spoiler alert - this one ends with a broken arm!  It was an amazing trip and I am glad that we decided to do it.  It just makes me realize that I want to take a family vacation every year and I also want to take a grown-ups only vacation during the year as well.  

We booked a 5 day Carnival cruise out of New Orleans, La for the very end of the summer before our eldest daughter was set to start school for the year.  We drove to Louisiana in enough time so we could stay in a hotel the night before the cruise.  We cruised from New Orleans to Progreso, Mexico and then Cozumel, Mexico before returning back to Louisiana.

I will be posting several blogs over the next few days and will return and link them here once they are posted.  I have planned to do:

a review of the ship that we cruised on
the ship room that we stayed in
tips on packing for a cruise
tips for cruising with kids
tips for road tripping with children
a review of the shore excursion that we booked
Carnival Programs review - Faster to the Fun and Bottomless Bubbles Soda program
Louisiana hotel review

If there is anything else that you are curious about or would like to know you can message below and let me know.  I am far from an experienced cruiser but this was my fourth, so I like to think that I know a little bit more than your average joe.

Thanks for reading!  

Potty training: The Naked Method

Isabella is the first child that I have had living with me when old enough to be potty trained.  I had a lot of confusion and anxiety about potty training.  When is she going to be ready?  How do you start?  Which method should I use? 

When you look online at any article about potty training, they will give you anywhere from two to ten things to evaluate to know if your child is ready to be potty trained.  When we looked at any of those lists, Isabella never met all of the factors.  She was old enough and could communicate her needs, but she didn’t care that she was in a messy diaper and she didn’t show any interest in doing it.  Anytime that we brought up the subject she FREAKED out.  She had never been traumatized by any related experiences before, she just had zero desire to potty train, sit on the potty, be near a potty, etc.  I was never willing to push her because I knew that she would let us know when she was ready.  Plus, having a potty trained toddler meant that she wasn’t a baby anymore and that makes me sad.  

So we waited… and waited… and waited.  People were concerned, but I knew that she would potty train on her own time.  I trust my children and mine and my husband’s parenting instincts enough to know that we would get there eventually and that it would be an easier time if she was ready. 

We decided that this year we would like to go on a cruise for our family vacation.  When I began talking to Isabella about what that was going to be like, I started prepping her by saying that she needed to be going on the big girl potty by then if she wanted to swim onboard – not as a threat but as a reward.  She instantly perked up and said that she wanted to go potty.  Fantastic!  I took out her big girl panties that were now too small because I bought them when I assumed that she would be potty training around 2, and we followed the steps that I thought you were supposed to follow.  I fed her more drinks than I would have ever before, I asked her every 15 minutes if she had to go, allowed her to not wear pants, etc.  She had three accidents in about 30 minutes.  I was discouraged.  I knew enough to not be mad about it towards her but I had no idea what to do. 

I was discouraged and apprehensive about continuing because I didn't want to try with her and fail.  I want to see my children succeed in everything and even with a silly thing like potty training, I wanted her to succeed.  Hubby found a website years ago that talked about something that I am going to call "The Naked Method" and one of my friends confirmed that this should work, so we decided to give it a try.  The instructions are simple:

• Remove clothing from your child from the waist down
• Give lots of drink(s)
• Wait

Let me tell you, the first step was difficult for me.  I like to run a modest household for all of my children.  I don't like for children to wear 'skanky' outfits.  Even in long dresses, both girls still wear shorts or leggings underneath.  We all know how lady-like a three year old is, right?  Rarely do I let my children run around in just a diaper, but I had high hopes that this would work, so off the clothes went. 

We decided to initiate the process using a stand alone potty chair.  We were also dealing with a broken arm situation with her at the same time and we figured this would be the easiest transition possible.  This stand alone potty chair also enabled us to take this chair in the car since it was about the size of a 24 pack of sodas.  This helped us to still go places around town and not be stranded while she was in the potty training process.  In fact, we still have the chair in the back of our car today in case we get stranded on a highway somewhere without ready access to a bathroom. 

Isabella had one accident and was golden after that.  We pumped her full of water, milk and whatever other liquids that we had on hand and she was able to go three times in one hour.  She quickly understood what to do and how to make it happen.  We even took her out in public on a road trip a few days after this potty training debacle began and she was completely fine.  To this day, she has had maybe 3 total accidents and this was almost 8 months ago.  The theory is that without any diaper, pants or panties on they are uncomfortable when they need to use the restroom and you are more quickly able to determine that they need to use the bathroom and respond appropriately.  Once she knew that the feeling that she was getting was her needing to pee, then it was all good from there.

Silas has been a bit more of a challenge.  Even months after he has been potty trained, he still gets busy and has an accident.  He benefitted from having Isabella as an example.  He wanted to be potty trained because she was.  He picked the general idea of potty training up quicker than we had heard boys would, so we just ran with it. 

Hands down, I would recommend this 'naked method' to anyone, anywhere who was trying to potty train a child.  It's easy.  It's fast.  And more importantly, it works.

How did you decide to potty train your child?