Song Lyric of the Day:
La-di-da-di, we like to party / We don’t cause trouble, we don’t bother nobody / We’re, just some men that’s on the mic / And when we rock upon the mic we rock the mic right / For all of y’all, keep y’all in health / Just to see you smile and enjoy yourself
Slick Rick & Doug E. Fresh / “La Di Da Di“
Today marks 7 weeks and 1 day since one of the most magical, glorious, long-awaited things that can ever happen to a parent happened to me: Coraline became fully potty-trained. So yes, there will be some talk of pee and poop within this post.
Thanks to day care — probably the only time I’ll ever be happy about peer pressure — Coraline had been practicing going potty for more than a year. She first successfully peed on the potty just shy of her second birthday. For months now, she’s been accident-free at day care, wearing BIG GIRL PANTIES!!! (her enthusiasm, I assure you) and only wearing Pull-Ups at naptime. On the days I work from home, she’s worn her BIG GIRL PANTIES!!! during naptime without any accidents.
So on that magical, glorious, long-awaited day 7 weeks and 1 day ago, I was working when she walked over and quietly, almost shyly, said, “Mommy, I have to go potty.” Nothing unusual about that (except for the quiet shyness) since that’s what she said any time she had to pee. So you can imagine my surprise when she ended up dropping off the kids at the pool, a first. I could have thrown a party for her right then. As it is, I thought of her breakthrough as her early birthday present to herself, since it was six days before her 3rd birthday. She even came up with a potty-training mantra on her own: Pee and poop go only in the potty!
She’s had a few accidents since then, like an accident at school one day the teacher blamed on Coraline’s enthusiasm to get the job done, or not getting to the toilet quickly enough here at home. But overall she’s done great. And just two nights ago, she announced that she was going potty on her own, no doubt inspired by seeing her two big cousins do just that this past weekend. She was so serious about going on her own that she made me wait in the hall, around the corner from the bathroom door. You know, so she could have some privacy and, oh, not have to see her mother.
Even if Coraline were still working on the whole potty-training thing, I’d still be proud of her. But now that she is fully potty-trained, I thought I’d share it with all of you exactly how proud I am of my (big in her mind) little girl.
*My apologies to Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh, but I just couldn’t resist.