Use the potty potty

The third time is a charm.  Yeah, right.  After cleaning up urine from the wool carpet in the living room, left by one adorable, but torturous 21 month old darling, followed by a slip and slide on the floor in the girls' room that had Lily in complete fits of laughter, you can imagine the delight, the charm I might even venture, I felt when I sat down on Virginie's bed for a good night nursing session and found my pants drenched. 

"I peeped."  Thank you.  I will be sure to make a note of that.  Hold on while I rip the comforter, duvet cover, sheets, mattress pad, feather bed, pillow, and pillowcase from your bed and remake it just minutes before you were to be drifting to toddler La la land.  I want to say that this scenario had me in stitches, that the cuteness of her tiny little chattering voice and smiles, offer of a hug and one of her gauzy tissues turned my frown upside down, but alas, I cannot offer that.  What's a mother to do?  She can talk.  She's advanced.  Totally.  She is so not ready for complete potty training. 

But she is able to remove any and all clothing and accessories including diapers and pull ups.  Insisting that she keep these things on and let me know before she needs to pee on the potty is beyond ridiculous.  The absurdity of the thought has me in stitches, the evening wind down cocktail can do that.  I want her to have the freedom to move about.  It's hot in Barbados and it is most certainly most comfortable unclothed.  Her sister is just as naked as she, in fact, I think Lily's nudity is what precipitated this new interest.  I'd had Virginie in diapers and no other clothing for months.  She even sported that look in the cooler climates of an Atlanta winter and unseasonably cold Florida.  Suddenly a diaper, not even a pull up, is good enough for the gal.  Maybe she is preparing to train herself?

When traveling in China, my cousin sent me some pictures of little kids walking around with pants with the crotches cut out.  At the time, I was training Lily and telling her often how difficult it was to get Lily to recognize the sensation and then act on it before going in a pull up or other training pant.  The photos she sent offered another solution.  The children basically just went when it suited them.  Right through the hole in the pants.  A little pee.  A little poo.  At the Great Wall.  Walking down the street.  Until they just got tired of it running down their legs? 

I don't know.  I think I am better off with Virginie at least being completely naked so I don't have to remove soiled clothing from her little body, but the vigilance, and you know I am not about to have no "stinking up to be damned" pee pee smell warmed up in the Barbados heat all over my house, is just wrecking me.  I have to keep my eyes on that little behind and hope I can catch the squat or the grimace or the drip before the spill.  I have the mop at the ready and now the laundry soap, ammonia, baking soda potions, Febreze, and paper towels and damp cloths.  There are little baggies, plastic gloves, and immediate delivery to the outdoor garbage cans for the #2 pencils and I don't mean pencils.

My sister always said to me when dealing with the developmental milestones of her children, whom she had long before I ever thought I would have any, "You don't see too many six year-olds, doing (and you fill in the blank)."  I know this is part of the process and that my baby will end up using the toilet like all the rest of us.  That ain't nothing to write home about.  And while she mostly just sits on her little potty beaming at me and wiping herself and putting paper in the pot (without actually going, of course), I am charmed. 

(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.