Up, Up, and Away!

Back in February Carl turned three and we really hoped to toilet train him as soon as possible. Anybody who has had kids will know that this is Priority Number 1. It’s the holy grail of early childhood which symbolises parents freedom from bags of nappies and wipes, the expense of buying said items and of course the indignity of having to clean another persons’ bum. Frequently.
One of hubby’s colleagues was telling us recently that they have finally toilet trained their third child. He gloomily mused that they have been changing nappies for eleven years and he reckons it has cost them 7,000 euros!!!
For us it was going to be a particular challenge because hubby and I have never actually succeeded in toilet training a child before. Aha, but what about Niels, I hear you ask. It’s time to confess – we didn’t do the job ourselves. Instead we called in a professional: my sister Christine. We were in New Zealand at the time – Niels was 3 years 8 months old - and despite our best efforts and utter despair Niels applied his particular style of pig-headed stubbornness and refused to comply. My sister said “leave it to me, he can stay here for a couple of days. And don’t leave any nappies”.
Filled with awe at her self confidence and a hefty dose of scepticism we left Niels with his cousins on the farm, wondering how it would go. Christine fixed him with a steely glare and told him “I don’t have any nappies in this house. If you need to go, there’s the toilet. And you’re not having any more rides in the tractor until you do everything in the toilet”.
Would you believe it, he was instantly toilet trained? DAY AND NIGHT! He never wore a nappy again, and only had a couple of wee accidents at night in the following months. Amazing. And also obviously incredibly infuriating for his parents who had tried everything up to that point to get the same result.
We’d already warned Christine when she visited in February that her expertise would be required again for Carl, but he has surprised and elated us by deciding that yes, actually he is a big boy now and no, he doesn’t need nappies!! OK there was some bribery in the background. He wanted to go up in the DHL balloon, the worlds’ largest tethered helium balloon which is in downtown Singapore. No problem, I said, but the price is that you have to be toilet trained. Well, in the last couple of weeks he has done just that. Our little boy is a man at last. I’ve included some photos of the balloon trip – it rises to 150 metres on a tether and the views are amazing.
For those of you who may have the impression that we don’t really live in a city, I’ve put a big red dot approximately where our condominium is (behind the white building a bit). We are lucky to live somewhere very quiet with lots of greenery around us, but as you can see we are in the centre of Singapore City. There are about 4.8 million of us on this little island!

So here’s to Carl, our little champion who still melts hearts by sidling up to people with a grin and declaring “you’re my friend”, who refused to smile for the camera even though he loved riding in the balloon, and who several times a day clasps my hand in his and bursting with pride says “no more nappies, heh?”