I think we can safely call it: Mira is out of diapers. Sure, there's still the nighttime/naptime Pull-Up, but she is successfully - and proudly - wearing her Dora underwear around town. If you've happened to have spent time around Mira any time in the last few days she has surely announced to you, "I pee potty!" Definitely all the parents at Wednesday's soccer game heard the news - for both teams.
This Peeing Pride is new - she was definitely anti-potty until recently, which is why I am so excited that we've arrived. Case in point: when I took her diapers off so she could sit on the potty, she:
- Angrily tipped over the Diaper Genie and tried to retrieve her diaper from the canister.
- Got a new diaper and tried to put it on herself.
- Hit me with the new diaper when she couldn't get it on. (Eventually, she was distracted from her anger by the fact that the diaper made one heck of a bonnet. Here she is, looking deceivingly agreeable. Hah!)
Because of Mira's strong potty training aversion, I actually offered my niece a tidy cash payment if she wanted to get Mira out of diapers. My niece was leaving town so it didn't work out, but my offer demonstrates my own lack of motivation to conquer the task. If you're wondering at this point, why not wait until Mira was "interested," there were a couple reasons.
- She's plenty old enough.
- When she was reluctantly diaperless, she could hold it for hours. Meaning she had the control. Meaning her aversion was simply a battle-of-wills.
I've never been totally comfortable with the (fairly popular) Wait-until-the-child-wants-to-do-it approach. I was probably influenced by our Early Childhood class experience, too. We spent one day discussing potty training -er, toilet learning, sorry.
Half of the kids in the class had foreign-born parents and half were the typical American parents. The children of the foreign-born parents were all out of diapers at two. No exceptions. Those parents (Somali, Korean, Algerian, Indian and Argentinian) thought it was definitely "an American idea" to keep our kids in diapers as long as we did. They politely explained that in their countries, buying diapers was an expense many people couldn't easily afford. Or that a three-year-old in diapers in their country was viewed like four-year-old wearing diapers here.
I looked at Mira, my obstinate child, who could hold her bladder for several hours, and sighed. Yeah, she can do it. I have to deal with it.
We took her out of diapers a week ago. She hasn't had any accidents. She got on board with the idea about two days into the endeavor, when she discovered it was a darn easy way to get a treat. (She peed 14 times in three hours. Little dribbles that nevertheless merited Tic Tacs.)
Last night when we were at Target she had her first Public Pee. (Public Pee meaning in a public restroom, not in front of all the shoppers). Afterward she went running out of the restroom shouting to Randy (and all of the other shoppers who were standing in line at the registers), "I PEE ON POTTY TARGET!"
Folks, I think we've arrived.
