5 Months and "potty training" (or not so much...)

My baby is 5 months old today! Here's a quick update on a couple of new things he's doing:

~He can sit up really well with just a tiny bit of support... he can sit up on his own holding onto something (toy basket, etc.), but of course you have to watch to make sure he doesn't topple over... and he can sit up without anyone helping him for a few seconds, then he falls over :) won't be long now before he's sitting unassisted!

~He's reaching for things like crazy! He already wants everything Alex has - can't imagine what that's going to be like in a couple of months!!

~He always rolls right over when placed on his tummy... but still doesn't roll back to front. He is SO CLOSE. When he really wants a toy that's just out of reach, he will ALMOST do it, then give up! He could totally do it if he actually wanted to, I think.

~He is still being a stinker when it comes to sleeping at night... he's waking up a few times some nights, and other nights he does great. I'm sticking to feeding him once through the night... he's sleeping 7:30-6:30 with a feeding at some point (usually 1-2ish). When he wakes up other times I've been letting him cry a few minutes and sometimes he goes back to sleep. If not, I go in every few minutes and try to settle him with his passy. That usually puts him right to sleep if he doesn't fall back to sleep on his own.

~Naps are ok... he started sleeping with a stuffed animal or his taggies blanket this month and likes that a lot! He snuggles with them and will suck on them some when not using his passy to fall asleep. His best naps are his first nap of the day and his afternoon nap (which I often snuggle with him for - love this time of day!) His other 2-3 naps are just catnaps that last around 25-45 minutes.


And on to my BIG challenge these past few days: POTTY TRAINING! It hasn't been a huge disaster, but hasn't gone well at all either...

~After a bit of research, we decided to dive right in and try and do a "straight to underwear" approach where we could hopefully potty train him fairly quickly. It did not go as planned :)
~We talked about his "special potty day" for a couple of days and he was SO excited!
~He woke up from his nap on Monday, ready for his special day! We gave him a brand new potty and decorated it together with Thomas stickers (we'd been reading a book, "The Potty Train", and he wanted his own train potty!)
~We put him in his new underwear and he was super excited to sit on his potty. He stayed there a looong time reading books (he especially loves his Elmo potty book that I found several months ago at a garage sale, it's one of those music books!)
~He wants to be BIG and use the potty like Elmo, mommy, daddy, and some of his friends. He loves his underwear.
~We've been giving him a couple of M&Ms whenever he sits on the potty if his underwear are dry before he tries. I take him to the potty frequently and have been trying to predict his accidents.
~He has no clue... he peeks in the potty to see if he made anything... and never does...
~We've got him in training underwear, so the accidents haven't been real messy, but it's A LOT of laundry since I'm too cheap to buy lots of the training underwear! haha. I bought some regular ones too, but he's not ready for those yet, they'd be super messy I think.
~He tells me right when he has an accident and walks with his legs widespread to the bathroom... not upset, but wanting to be changed right away... he looks ridiculously silly walking like that :)
~It's been 2.5 days and we've yet to have a single success in the potty... so I think we're going to put diapers back on and do a more gradual approach (still try to use the potty a couple of times a day and hope for a success soon.)
~We did have somewhat of a breakthrough last night... I put him back in a diaper and told him he could still use the potty when he needed to, but we were going to wear the diaper the rest of the night (I told him it was almost bedtime, because he wanted to wear his underwear! but our convo went like this, "Are you going to try and peepee in the potty if we put the underwear on? or are you just going to go in your underwear?" "I'm just going to go in my underwear." So... I told him it was almost bedtime anyway and he was ok with putting the diaper on haha.) As soon as he peed in his diaper though, he gave me a look and TOLD me he did it! (he's never done this in a diaper before!!) I think he has at least learned the feeling from this experience :)
~Unless he expresses lots of interest or makes some big breakthroughs over the next month, I think we'll wait until after all the holidays and traveling to hit this hard again.