ECing gets easier in some aspects as your baby grows, and in some ways gets tricker. It's easier because they usually start showing clear signs of needing to go to the potty, or atleast, you've become so aware of their signals that it's easier to tell. For us, if DS gets fussy, we usually take him to the potty; many times that's what was wrong and he's happy, other times he screams at us. (=

As soon as DS could sit unsupported, we bought a toilet seat insert and he loved it. And so did we, as the mess went straight into the potty, instead of into a receptacle which we'd have to clean out. I also think he likes the cartoon designs on them. We get ours at Wally World for around ten bucks.

Another problem that presented itself was what on earth to do when out and about. He was fine with the toilet at home, but he got scared on public toilets. This was mainly because so many of them now are the automatic flushing kind, and they'd go off a million times because of my movement. Also, it is difficult to try to undress baby in the cramped stall. So, we were very frustrated at this point, because DS starts to get very fussy if he needs to go and you're not taking him, but he'd cry so much on public toilets that it made the whole rigamaroll just not worth it. Then one day we found the most awesome of awesome potties, the potty on the go. It's a plasic potty that uses a disposable plastic bag as the "bowl". It was simply amazing. We could set it up in our truck and whenever he needed it we would go out to the parking lot, DS would relieve himself, and then back in we'd go. We did sometimes take it inside with us, and in family restrooms it works great, but other times public restrooms were still a little loud and scary for him. Another awesome thing was that if we were travelling we didn't have to wait for a gas station if he needed to go, we'd just pull over and take him. This also showed us that he didn't really hate his carseat, he just needed to go potty.

Sign language is such an awesome tool for communication with a baby. I cannot express how cool it is to ask my crying baby what he needs and he replies in sign language with "potty" or "nurse" or "pain" (teething pain, that is). Anyway, we have been consistently showing the sign for "potty", "pee" and "poop", since day one. He never has signed pee, but he does do "poop" and "potty" very well. The trick is paying attention to the baby and the signs he's making. Most of our misses happen when we are watching TV and he's playing.

Mobility is wonderful, as it becomes much more fun to play with your babe, but it also brings its challenges. Many times DS was too busy crawling to bother with the potty business. One really cool thing that started happening, though, even if on rare occasions, was that he'd crawl into the bathroom and sit there. That is a very reliable clue that he needed to go.

In my first article I wrote about how to dress your ECed baby, and in this stage, we still avoid Onesies for the most part, and go for shorts instead. The main change though, is we've found a great way for him to keep that awareness that he pees or poops in his pants. We founds some 2T-3T undies and we put those on, then pull-ups over that. This is a great way for him to realize when he goes, but it also protects his surroundings. If we're at home, sometimes he's just in undies, but I think it's only polite to protect other people's carpet, hardwoods, tile, etc. Also, the pull-ups (cheapos, once again) have this cool feature where the design fades if the baby pees, and that helps us to keep from checking for the gel. (If the baby pees in a disposable diaper or pullup, the pee combines with this other stuff and forms gel, so the only way to really tell if the baby has peed is to kinda pinch a piece of the diaper and rub it between your fingers. If it feels like gel inside there it's time to change it!)

All in all, this stage is truly fun. I will warn you that sometimes it's easy to get frustrated with DC because you feel like they should know better if they go poop in their diaper. But usually, as I forestated, we are usually ignoring the baby (not on purpose) when he has an accident. So just learn from the mistakes you make and keep on ECing!