1 Mother 2 Another

Cora is now three and a half years old.
She has been pooping exclusively in the potty for about eight
months now. She is completely capable of peeing in the potty
– she clearly has the brains to understand it since she is,
as I told you yesterday, smarter than me.


She’s just lazy.

And to be fair, she comes by it honestly
– so are we. Brian and I have figured that since she does the
messy stuff in the potty, what’s the rush? She’ll get
bored with it eventually. Except she hasn’t. Sure,
she’ll pee in the potty when it suits her: when she wants
some candy, or when her older sister is going in a public place.
But otherwise she’s content to let her Dora pull-ups capture
it for her. I’ll realize Cora hasn’t peed for a couple
hours and I’ll say, “Cora, do you need to go
potty?” “No,” she’ll say offhandedly,
“I just goed in my diaper.”


But as I said, she’s three and a half and it’s time.
I’m fully well aware that the only thing standing between her
and some underpants is a couple days running commando, and have
held off doing it strictly for the mess factor. But it’s
time.


So today is the big day. Cora’s staying home all day, and
will get to live in a dream world. First up, she gets to be Naked
Girl all day long. This, for a child who begs to strip down
“just for lunch”, who has an entire dance move called
“Crooked Hiney” (you have to see it to believe it, and
with my luck she’ll be doing it on Saturday Night Live in
twenty-five years as the recurring character, “Crooked Hiney
Girl”) So clearly, naked is the way to go.


But she’s not strictly naked – she’ll be wearing
big-girl underpants. Which is another dream come true. She wore
them a few hours on Monday and quickly learned what they feel like
wet. Not good.


In addition to the dress code, Potty Party Day will be celebrated
with numerous surprise drills. At random moments during the day
(every thirty to sixty minutes) I’ll yell “Potty
Drill!” and she’ll run and sit on the potty. If she
pees – anything – she gets candy. She’ll also
have a reward waiting for her – several jewels – if she
goes the entire day in a dry pair of panties.


And since she’ll be in just her skivvies all day, we figured
we’d make it an art day. So we’re bringing out the
paints and messy glitter glue and just having a day of it.


Will this work? Who knows. But it’s worth a try. I’m
tired of diapers.