The best puppy potty-training advice you will ever hear
We brought our Chocolate Boston Terrier puppy home at the end of August, and now we can’t imagine life without our sweet Annabelle Nessa.
(She even has her own Insta account, so I don’t spam everyone on my main one.)
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In the beginning, it was certainly an adjustment. We’d purposely waited to get a puppy until the kids were old-ish (four and six) so we weren’t dealing with two toddlers AND a puppy.
But it was still like having a newborn in the sense that your entire life is wrapped up in them. You can’t leave those fuzzy little messes alone for a second.
Shockingly, though, Annabelle didn’t have a single accident for the first 36 hours she was home with us. She peed and pooped outside every time we took her out, and I was secretly smug that I’d gotten a GENIUS DOG.
(I even had really smug plans to return the bottle of carpet pet-accident spray because we wouldn’t need it. Stupid smug me.)
… and then the accidents started.
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SO. CUTE. THO.
I really struggled with the “watching the puppy constantly” part, especially since our kids ARE now old enough that I don’t have to do that anymore.
With a husband who is almost always working or sleeping, it felt very overwhelming. I still had to work and cook and clean and watch our two HUMAN children.
But the puppy was constantly needing my eyes on her or else … she was having an accident, chewing something she shouldn’t be chewing, eating something she shouldn’t be eating, etc.
I would enlist the kids to watch her when I couldn’t, but they kind of sucked at it. They’d get distracted when they were “on duty” and WHAM! Another accident.
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SO. SNUGGLY. THO.
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We enrolled Annabelle in puppy training classes at our local vet and they were SO helpful. She learned all of the basics (sit, stay, shake paw, etc.) with the exception of “down” (which is apparently a hard one for small dogs to grasp, since they’re so close to the ground already.
At around the 11-week mark, I remember our trainer asking how things were going. Annabelle was still having accidents regularly and we’d had her three weeks at that point.
I felt frustrated because it SEEMED like we were doing everything right. When we took her outside, she peed! She pooped! No problem.
It was just that she was also doing those things INSIDE every time my back was turned for a minute. Arghhhhh.
“Accidents? Who, me?”
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So are you ready for what she told me?
The BEST puppy potty-training advice I ever could have heard? …
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It’s this:
“Keep her on a leash in the house — or if you can’t watch her every second, put her in her kennel.”
What?!
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At this point, we’d been putting her in her kennel every time we left the house, as well as here and there when I needed to leave the main level (to work downstairs, tuck the kids in upstairs, etc.) She didn’t mind her kennel at all, and it was such a relief to know she was safe (and that our stuff was safe from her.)
But put her in the kennel even if I’m … in the room, but busy?! Or put her on her leash in the house?
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YES! That’s what worked.
When I was cooking or loading the dishwasher, I put her on her leash and kept it looped around my wrist. She couldn’t get more than five or six feet away from me, so she wouldn’t have an accident since I was *right there.*
(They do sell hands-free leashes but I just used our regular ones.)
If I needed to pee, I’d put her in her kennel. Yes, I was only gone a minute, but this prevented her from running JUST out of my line of sight to have an accident.
Our awesome trainer reminded me not to feel guilty about doing this.
It was the only way to ensure she wouldn’t have an opportunity to have an accident, because unless I was right there with her — playing with her, feeding her, walking her around the house on her leash, engaging with her in any way — she was safely contained in her kennel. Dogs don’t like to pee in their kennel, so she wouldn’t pee.
When she WAS with me, I could watch her closely and take her outside as soon as she started showing signs that she needed to pee — sniffing the floor, looking around, trying to pull away, etc.
NO. MORE. ACCIDENTS!
She was fully trained by the 12-week mark!
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I shared this advice with a friend who had also recently adopted a puppy and was struggling with potty-training, and the next time I saw her at preschool pick-up she was VERY grateful.
Keeping her pup with her or in his kennel had completely trained him, too!
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So if you’re adopting a puppy soon, down the road, WHENEVER, please remember this advice. It will seriously save your sanity and also your carpeting.
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When your kid learns a bad word
“Hey Mom, I know the ‘F’ word!”
The first time he claimed to know it, he didn’t. He blanked when I asked him and couldn’t remember it.
“Was it … fudge?”
“Nope.”
“Fetch?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fart?” (In my mind, this is the actual ‘F’ word.)
“No … I can’t remember.”
That was a couple of months ago. This time? He proudly told me he knew the ‘F’ word and, again, I invited him to tell me. He squared his shoulders and grinned.
“WHAT THE F**K!” he said brazenly, with exactly the right emphasis.
Oh, he knew it all right. Did I mention he is six years old?
“Where did you hear that?!” I choked, my eyes bugging out of my head. I knew, with confidence, he had not heard it from me. I’m pretty good about swearing quietly (or mentally) if the kids are around just to avoid situations like this.
“On the bus.”
The elementary school bus where the oldest kids are in Grade 5, so they’re all about 10 years old?! Yeesh.
I recovered from the shock, steadied myself and began my usual Mommy Inquisition.
Who said it? Was it a Grade 5 student? Did they get in trouble? Have you said it in front of other kids? You didn’t TEACH it to anyone, did you?!
I didn’t get a lot of information out of him. He claimed to have forgotten who taught it to him, but his eyes were flickering around in that I’m-not-being-truthful way. Fine, I get it. He doesn’t want to get this particular kid in trouble. Snitches get stitches or whatever.
So he knew the ‘F’ word — not only knew it, but knew the proper inflection and everything. Now it was one of those parenting moments that had to be handled immediately, and handled well …
How did I handle it? Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
Replacing your kitchen sink and faucet … all by yourself
When our kitchen faucet started leaking beyond repair, it was clear we needed to buy a new one. But if we were going to replace the faucet, it made sense to get rid of the perpetually grimy (not-so-stainless) stainless steel kitchen sink.
We knew we did not want stainless steel after five years of staring at the scratches and stains on our current one.
We went to Kent and chose a chip-resistant BLANCO Vienna two-bowl granite kitchen sink and a Taymor faucet with a really high arc.
The boxes were barely in the house before we excitedly dove into the project.
After the plumbing was unhooked it was time to take out the yucky old sink. We ran an X-acto knife around the lip to break the seal and lifted it out pretty easily. The hole it left behind looked huge and it was strange seeing sunlight peeking through the crack between the cabinet doors.
There was a minor hiccup when we went to hook up the new faucet: the water lines were too low so we needed to extend them. It required a quick trip back to Kent for a CinchClamp kit and a second set of shut-off valves, but the modification went smoothly.
Then it was time to dry-fit the sink — exciting! We’d hoped it would drop in smoothly because we were nervous to cut into the countertop, but it needed some extra room around the top. I used a Sharpie to trace the paper template that came in the box and my handy husband carefully jigsawed out a hunk of countertop we didn’t need.
The real trouble started when it came to putting the plumbing back together. One pipe was too short and another was too long. We bundled up the kids and ran back to Kent in search of “join-y bits” so we could modify the pipes.
I found something called a union and we figured it was what we needed, along with a spare ABS pipe and some stinky yellow glue for sealing it all together.
Back at home, I put the kids to bed while my husband sawed new lengths of pipe and tried to reassemble the drainage system. He got it all put back together, ran the water . . . and it leaked.
There was cursing.
“But you did 95 per cent of it perfectly!” I was practically wringing my hands at this point, wondering if it was time to call in a professional.
“It doesn’t matter! It either works or it doesn’t!”
He was right, even though he could have done without the dramatic toss of the dish towel.
There was more fiddling with pipes, more leaking and more cursing. He’d fix one spot and then suddenly things wouldn’t line up under the other sink. Let’s just say it was a difficult evening that tested our marriage, OK? …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home
Thanks to Kent Building Supplies for providing us with the BLANCO Vienna sink so we could tackle this project (we purchased the faucet ourselves). As always, all opinions and plumbing mishaps are my own.
New year, new project!
Happy New Year, everybody!
It’s hard to believe that I started Laptops to Lullabies waaaay back in 2009, exactly eight years ago today. (I’d link back to those first pathetic posts, but yikesssss you might not want to read them.)
I’m not going anywhere — and neither is this blog — but I *did* start a second little project today. Apparently Jan. 1 is the only day I start blogs, so I pretty much had no choice!
It’s called Heather’s Handwriting and it’s a blog entirely WRITTEN (as in, using a pen, not typed).
There are just a couple of posts so far, since it literally was born today, but I like it already. It’s weird and casual and is bound to end up with a bunch of bizarre doodles everywhere, so it’s very much ME.
Why start another blog, when this one keeps me busy? I talk about it over there, but I guess it was part of a feeling of wanting to simplify and slow down a bit. Working on a handwritten blog means I’ll be getting my hands on a real-life pen at least once a day, and sitting down (preferably in a comfy chair) to write in a real-life notebook — not a flashing computer screen.
I’m THAT person who needs to put down the phone, step away from the computer, shred the to-do list, take myself less seriously, stop stressing, and take a zillion deep breaths. Constantly.
I’m hoping this handwriting project reminds me to do all of the above.
(Plus I get to use all of the pretty notebooks I’ve been hoarding for a special day/occasion/project/I have no idea. Pretty notebooks are everythinggggg.)
Why half-birthdays are more fun than REAL birthdays
A kid’s birthday without any gifts to buy, invitations to create and mail, huge party to plan or guest list to wrangle? Yes, please!
They’re called ‘half birthdays’ and they’re soooo much simpler than real birthdays. I’m quite a fan.
Our son’s real birthday is June 6 and our daughter’s is April 25, so the official half-birthdays in our house happen on Dec. 6 and Oct. 25. Oh, and the puppy’s birthday is July 2 so I suppose we’ll have her first half-birthday on Jan. 2.
(No, my husband and I don’t feel the need to celebrate turning 30-muffle-muffle AND A HALF.)
So what does a half-birthday involve? Whatever you want! In our house, there aren’t any gifts but we treat the day with a lot of fanfare — and there is certainly cake.
The kids get to choose what kind of cake (or cupcakes) they’d like to have, and the youngest and I do the baking while the eldest is at school.
As soon as the bus drops the elementary-schoolers off in the afternoon, we round up our neighbours and bring everybody over for a slice of cake (or a cupcake) and a glass of milk.
The kids crowd around the table, we all sing Happy Half-Birthday To You and then we dive into the homemade buttercream (which is divine, if I do say so myself — I use the Cake Boss recipe).
I also started breaking one candle in half to show the “half” they’ve achieved, so our son loved blowing out six and a half candles on Dec. 6. (Note to self: find better way to do this because a tiny stub of a candle quickly gets melted wax all over the icing.)
We’ve only celebrated two half-birthdays so far (one per kid) but it’s definitely a tradition we’re going to continue. I was surprised by how VERY excited they got to have a second “special day,” and it was a nice way to mark the fact that they really were halfway to turning a year older.
I’d slipped a tiny birthday card in our son’s lunch on the morning of his half-birthday. It was the size of a gift tag and I’d just thought it was a cute gesture — a message quickly printed out before we rushed out the door for the bus.
He carried it around with him all day, and even wrote “I love you too” on the bottom of it. We went out for dinner and he brought it with him to the restaurant, standing it up on the table so he could see it while he ate his hamburger and french fries. He told us, over and over, that it was “the best day ever.”
I noticed the little card, days later, carefully propped up on his nightstand. It was worn around the edges from being in his pocket, and he picked it up and read it out loud to me for the dozenth time.
To me, his half-birthday hadn’t been all that different than a regular Tuesday afternoon. There’d been school and deadlines and cleaning up and rushing around. I’d forgotten to ice his chocolate cake until 10 minutes before it was time to get him at the bus stop, so there was even more rushing.
But to him, that Tuesday had been a momentous celebration of the fact that he was getting closer to being seven years old. And he was absolutely right.
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