Under Where?

For those of you who may have seen Matt's comment on yesterday's post -- I am planning to do a post about my Christmas Legos. But I only just finished building the big set last night, and I want to do some dorky pictures with my nice camera that I didn't have the energy for last night. So sometime soon -- possibly next week -- I'll talk about my Very Lego Christmas, with pictures. But not today.

Today, I'm talking about Operation Underwear.


Matt and I had decided that after the holidays, we'd transition Alex to wearing underwear to bed instead of a pullup diaper. He's four now, and it's high time we were done with diapers of any sort. We had to go with this "endure multiple accidents" approach with him for daytime as well, so I suspect the kid may just not get it until we let him deal with it.

Matt's sister, who is currently potty-training her eldest, had a brilliant suggestion for us (that I have no idea why we hadn't encountered it or thought of it before): instead of changing the sheets in the middle of the night, just make the bed in layers to begin with: mattress pad, sheet, mattress pad, sheet. So when there's an accident, you just strip off the top layer and you're ready to go.

So last night, Matt double-made Alex's bed and put undies on him under his pajamas. We both reminded him that he could get up and go potty whenever he felt like it.

We both checked him before we went to bed, and he was dry.

At 3:45, he came into our room to report an accident. I sent him to sit on the potty while I stripped the top layer off his bed. Matt got up and retrieved the wet pajamas, and I got him dressed again and tucked him back into bed. Matt decided to go ahead and wash the wet sheets right away -- that way they'd be ready to put in the dryer when we got up in the morning, and ready to put back on his bed after work.

Which is pretty smart thinking for 3:45am.

Now, Alex almost never has accidents during his nap anymore, so I felt pretty good about his going back to sleep at 4, because we get up for the day around 6. Surely he could make it that long.

Nope, apparently not. When my alarm went off at 6, Alex came in (as he usually does) and I said, "Are your pants still dry, buddy?"

"I changed into shorts."

"You did? Why?"

"My pants were wet."

I got up and checked his bed and yep, sure enough, he'd had another accident.

We may need to invest in another set or two of mattress pads and sheets...