Elimination Communication

We walked to the park to play with some friends this morning. It's great to watch the kids play and get to have good, if fractured, conversations with like-minded friends. Definitely worth venturing out in the 157% humidity. So, let's talk about Elimination Communication. Word of caution: it has to do with poo. Mothers (and the elderly; see Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" speech in, I think, As You Like It) spend inordinate amounts of time pondering poo. Several months ago I read an article in a rather crunchy (as in granola) mothering magazine about moms who, instead of filling up landfills with disposable diapers or polluting the water supply laundering cloth ones, were instead potty training babies as young as a couple of weeks. That's right--a couple of WEEKS. The trick is in figuring out your baby's poo and pee "cues" (the Communication) and dangling them over the toilet to Eliminate. Sometimes there's a little Pavlovian signal--whistling( "Zippity Do Da"?) or making a hissing sound. Well, it now seems that EC has reached mainstream status--an article on msn.com last week. (If I knew how I'd link to the article. I do not. I see that my husband turned 'Luddite' blue in the previous post so you could link to something helpful.) After changing FOUR poo diapers in an hour and a half one day last week, I began to see the appeal. We are starting potty training with Harper (after months of fits and starts--she was probably ready to start when I was nine months pregnant. It is not possible to bend down to put a toddler on the potty at nine months pregnant) and she does a great job of Communicating just AFTER she has Eliminated. This morning at 4:30am Hudson Communicated quite loudly that he had, indeed, Eliminated, and would like very much for me do something about it, post haste. So, it turns out my children have Elimination, Communication down pat. It's the Communication THEN Elimination that needs work.