Firsts

Tonight was a gongshow.
My husband wasn't home during crazy hour (4:30 to bed). My team was short-handed; the kids had a power play.

My daughter took her diaper off only three times while I was making supper. Thank the heavenly stars. Last night, she removed her diaper six or seven times (once when it had shit in it).

Then during supper, all of a sudden, Amelia paused and said she had to poo. I considered just telling her to go in her diaper (because I was worn down), but then I picked her up and we raced upstairs and I held my breath nervously as I took off her diaper with her standing in front of the toilet. This is a risky move. If there is already poop in the diaper, which is likely, it gets on stuff. On chubby legs; on the floor as the diaper slides there; sometimes the kid steps in it; sometimes  they reach down to check if there is anything there (and there is) and it gets on their hands and then, if you aren't fast enough, on every surface within a several square metres. The whole ordeal is trouble.

But I peeked and the diaper seemed clean. I put Amelia on the toilet and she suddenly looked like she was seriously re-thinking the whole thing. She normally sits on the toilet seat for hours and rips toilet paper off the roll and flushes seventeen times and sings all the songs she knows. Today she had the look we all get when we're petrified but can't stop doing something. Like picking a scab. Or standing at the end of a dock in front of a calm lake on a June morning. Thrilled and horrified. That was what her face said. Okay, it mostly said horrified. She tried to get off mid-shit. I stopped her of course. I said calming things. She reached out and cupped my cheeks with her hands, her eyes pleading with mine and she said softly to me, "Mommy, YOU get on the toilet, please."

"I can't, honey. You're already on it."

Then it happened. She had a dump right there in the toilet. The first one I didn't have to scrape off her butt-cheeks. And we cheered (Cole and I) and sang and threw our hands up in the air and fed her congratulatory Smarties.

We all went back downstairs, danced around the kitchen a few times, then went back to our supper. Cole began to tell me something, stuttering a wee bit about this being the first time... and I was doing the dishes by then so I was only half listening.

Then he formed his entire thought and I stopped what I was doing and he said, "Amelia had her first poop on the potty, Mommy. And YOU made supper for the first time without Daddy's help!"

A big night for all of us.