Is your MIL ok w/AP, EC (or NIH)...or is she more into CIO?

Like any job, this new-parent business is filled with acronyms. I'm not even sure of 1/2 of them, but let me translate the title of this post for you:

MIL = Mother In Law
AP = Attachment Parenting
EC = Elimination Communication
NIH = Natural Infant Hygiene
CIO = Cry It Out

As it turns out, we are (ok, I am) much further on the Attachment Parenting philosophical trail than I ever thought we would be. I know this puts us into the minority, and some of you might be thinking to yourself: "Hippy! You west-coast San Francisco Granola Cruncher! I bet you don't even shave your armpits or wear a bra!"

But I do still shave (as does Yogesh), I wear a bra because I have to with these knockers, and we're still capitalists who believe in the free market (why are we having water-shortage issues in the Bay area? We have enough water, but the price of high-quality drinking water is PENNIES on the dollar of what it should be! But I digress)...

We've started working with Deven on infant potty training this week. Why? Well, it's simple: Deven has the ability to pee & poop on command now, and anything that will let us change 1 less diaper is a very, very good thing, in my book. Sure, we're still going to use diapers (mostly cloth, though we do resort to the leaky-landfill-filling disposables on occasion) - but we'll have him sit on the potty as much as possible and let him get used to doing his business there. In the past week, he's done it more on a towel on the floor than in a potty (my fault, because I didn't catch his cues), but even today he was getting more of the hang of it, and peed and pooped happily in a potty 5 times. :-)

Yogesh's mom, who will come stay with us in about a month, is totally used to this, as is our new (Tibetan) Nepali nanny, Yangchen. This is what everyone in Asia does, thankfully, so this is just status quo and no big deal to them (can you imagine the waste, if 2 billion Indians & Chinese used disposable diapers until age 3, the way we Americans do?!?)

All in all, this is a purely practical choice: The fewer diapers we have to change, the better. Sure, there will be more accidents, and I don't know yet if/how we'll do this when we're out-n-about, but I'm not worried about that right now. Wish us luck with fewer diaper changes!