Little Big Girl

Our little girl is growing up .  A couple of changes have made their way into Penelope's life.  For three weeks, she's been wearing underpants during the day instead of diapers.  Aside from the occasional misplaced puddle, she's doing really well getting to the bathroom and going potty all on her own.  She's also (usually) alerting us in time when she needs to go and we're in a public place.  Its a little more difficult when we're away from home sometimes... like at Ben's last t-ball game, where there were no bathrooms to be found and she had to go in the woods - "Mommy, I'm a sprinkler!"  She's sprinkled a couple other interesting venues as well.

Of course, the bathroom kind of looks like a war zone when she's done - bits of shredded toilet paper everywhere... water all over the place near the sink, because she washes and dries her hands several times at each potty break.  There's a clean-up process now that's a bit more involved than just changing a diaper.  It is a good trade-off though.  We're so tired of diapers.  She's still wearing them at night, but the end is definitely in sight.  Actually, now that I am thinking about it, the worst thing about diapers was the diaper pail, and we jettisoned that thing a long time ago.  I tried to deodorize it one day last summer. Nearly five years worth of stink could not be erased.  Not with bleach.  Not with vinegar.  Not with elbow grease.  Not even with Lysol.  It gives me nightmares sometimes.  After all, it is still out there somewhere, smelling like a swimming pool full of pickled poop.  We should have doused the thing in kerosene and taken a match to it.

But I'm off track here. The other big change is that we converted her crib to a toddler bed (um.. excuse me.. "big girl" bed).  That one just took effect yesterday, and so far so good.  I'm a little surprised that she's not fighting the whole bedtime thing now, but she seems to be content to just go to sleep.  And at least this morning, she woke up content to just sing in her bed for a few minutes instead of immediately getting up and leaving the room.

The next step of course, is the overnight potty training.  But we'll give her a little more time to reduce the puddle count (and us a little more time to sleep through the night) before we move onto that.