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Diaper disasters
Who hasn't had one? Hulya Migliorino of Bloomingdale, New Jersey, kept finding her 2-year-old soaked in the morning, despite the superabsorbent diaper she wore. Then one night, Migliorino had a little brainstorm: "I started putting a maxi-pad across the top of her diaper by the waistband. She sleeps on her tummy with her tushie up in the air, so the pad catches all the excess pee."
In a similar vein, Paula Goodnight, a mom of three from Maine-ville, Ohio, had a difficult time keeping diapers on her 15-month-old daughter, Amelia, who gleefully disrobed at every opportunity. Goodnight found the solution in the handyman's best friend: duct tape. "I would put a strip across her diaper, securing the two tabs," she says. "She couldn't pry the duct tape off and eventually quit trying." The only downside? "I got some awfully strange looks when I'd change her in a public restroom!"
Potty trouble
Potty training pretty much requires creative thinking at every turn. Sally Kolodziej of Chippewa Township, Pennsylvania, was having trouble getting her 3-year-old son, David, to do anything more than pee in the potty. "I noticed that he was going in his Pull-Ups in the same place every day, near a trunk in our living room. So I said, 'Why don't we move your potty behind the trunk? It can be your secret potty.' " David was impressed with the idea and used the "secret potty" the very next day. "We had tried to bribe him with everything under the sun for months, so this felt close to a miracle," says Kolodziej. "I wasn't thrilled about him pooping in the living room, but that was temporary." After a couple of months, David's secret potty migrated to the bathroom with little fanfare.
Never underestimate the power of bathroom humor when toilet training, either. My son A.J. (the procrastinator) has always responded well to an audience. Somewhere between 2 and 3, he developed several "potty dances" that, I'm almost ashamed to admit, we encouraged. There was the "pee dance," the "poop dance," and even the "gas dance." Each one had a different arrangement of flailing arms and stomping feet, each brought the house down with laughter -- and he was encouraged to "perform" in the bathroom for even more applause.
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