Cute, or gross? You decide.

I was hanging the washing out today when Chief came running outside.

"Mama, can you come? Asher's in the erm. Ash is in the toy..erm he's..."

Don't you love the way 3 and 4 year olds just suddenly lose the ability to formulate full sentences? It's like they develop this amazing vocabulary and then all of a sudden forget how to string all the different words together. It's like they can't actually get the words out quick enough, as though their brain is working faster than their mouth. Chief has the opposite problem too.

So anyway, there I am thinking ahead of her, wondering if Happy had fallen in the toy box and couldn't get out. Seemed more likely she'd persuaded him to climb in, or even stuffed him in there herself. I couldn't hear him crying or yelling so it couldn't be too urgent.

"He's in the erm... He's erm. Ash is in the..."

Oh for crying out loud, spit it out will you. I actually said that to her once and she looked at me strangely and then spat. Such literal creatures.

"Mummy, Ash is in the bath, the toy, bath, erm, the..."

Starting to make a bit more sense now. We have one of those big round plastic tubs, I just love them, you know the kind that can be an ice bucket, or a toy box, or a washing basket? Well, we used to bath Chief in ours, then it graduated to holding all the bath toys and currently it is temporary storage for random toys in our lounge. Makes sense that he could climb in easily but not get out so easily. I'm sure Chief has done that before too.

"Mama, Ash is in the bathroom, the toilet bathroom. Asher is in the toilet room. He's got poo. Can you come?"

Oh hang on. Not what I was expecting.

Me: "What's he doing in the toilet?"

Chief: "He did a poo. Can you come wipe his bottom?"

Me: "What? Isn't he wearing a nappy?"

Chief: "No."

Me: "Why not?"

Chief: "Because he's on the toilet"

Groan. Ask a stupid question.

Turns out that Happy One did a poo in his nappy so Chief decided she'd take him to the toilet. She set the toddler seat up for him, took his nappy off and then got a bit stuck for what to do. So she shut the door, with him and his dirty nappy inside and came to get me. Now, he hadn't played with the nappy, but it was a stinker and they had made a bit of a mess trying to get him to sit on the toilet seat. But all that aside I am actually very impressed by this big sisterly act. She even wanted to wipe his bottom once she'd watched how I did it. But she soon gave up and said, "you do it" when she realised it was a stubborn one. Yes, cute but still totally gross.

Eee man, my little girl makes me laugh sometimes

I picked Phoebe up from daycare today.

When I arrived she was on her way to the toilet. I watched as she pulled down her leggings and knickers, sat on the toilet, did a wee and attempted to wipe her bottom. Well, wasn't I the proud Mammy.

Then she got off the toilet and did a nudie run around the classroom. Pride, fall and all that.

Eventually I managed to catch her and get her dressed and we left.

Sort of. See, there's this cubby house in the playground on the way out. Phoebe loves this cubby house. She likes to hide in it from me, knowing full well, I'm sure, that at 8 months pregnant it's slightly beyond me to get on my hands and knees and pull her out of it. Somehow I did manage to get her out, which displeased her greatly. I could tell that as soon as I put her down she was going to run back into the playhouse so I attempted to carry her to the car. She squirmed like a giant worm making it really hard to keep hold of her. So I half-dragged, half-carried her to the car. By the time we got there she was crying. I asked her what was wrong.

Phoebe: Don't want to leave daycare, Mammy.
Me: We have to. It's time to go home and get some dinner.
Phoebe: No, Mammy, wanna go back to daycare with Stacey and Jen.
Me: Everyone's going home now, Pheebs. There'll be no one here to play with or look after you.
Phoebe: No Mammy, I don't wanna go home. Wanna stay daycare.
Me: Really? Why don't you want to go home? What about if we play Boom Boom Pow in the car?
Boom Boom Pow is her current favourite song, which I find quite amusing in itself. Little Black Eyed Peas fan.
Phoebe [Shaking head]: No, Mammy. Nooooo.

Anyway, during a lengthy and emotional discussion about the relative merits of going home versus staying at daycare all night I managed to get her fastened into the car seat. We set off for home with my current favourite CD playing, the latest Black Eyed Peas, The Beginning. Not, by the way, the one with Boom Boom Pow on it. I turned it up hoping to distract Miss Chief with music.

Phoebe [Wailing]: Boom Boom Pow, Mammy. Boom Boom Pow.

So I changed the CD and cranked up Boom Boom Pow. When it started she gave an excited giggle and started to sing.

Phoebe: Phoebe happy now. Phoebe not sad any more, Mammy.
Me: Really? That's good.
Phoebe: Phoebe don't want to stay at daycare any more Mammy. Phoebe want to go home. Have yum yums. Go home and have dinner. Boom boom pow.

How she made me giggle as she basically repeated all the things back to me that I'd said in an attempt to persuade her that going home was a great idea.

The hilarity didn't stop there either. Back home I was getting dinner ready when Phoebe came into the kitchen saying, "Lookame Mammy, lookame. Phoebe wearing a hat. Look Mammy, a hat. A hat."

I think we've cracked it: Toilet-training 10 days on

So far so good.

After a week of little accidents in her knickers, Phoebe even managed to get to the toilet for her number twos on both Monday and Tuesday this week. (Yesterday she pooed in her nappy during her sleep at daycare.) We have had no wee accidents. She seems to have mastered holding it in, although it is more often that I think to take her to the toilet just to see than she actually asks to go.

I really do think we've cracked it. Gosh! It was so easy. I mean I know it kind of took 6 months but once we committed to actually wearing knickers and only using nappies for sleeps it's gone incredibly smoothly. I guess the timing just happened to be right. Lucky us.

I suppose there's still a chance that she'll get sick and have an accident or that she'll regress once the baby is born but even on Tuesday when she had a bit of a runny poo thanks to a virus, she managed to tell me and got to the toilet on time.

What a clever little girl.

Knickers!

Today is Phoebe's first day at daycare without nappies. She's been wearing knickers (or not wearing them, depending on her mood) for the last two days. I committed myself to toilet training and vigilantly took her to the toilet every hour starting on Monday morning. So today she went off to daycare with two nappies: one for her sleep and a spare just in case; and three spare pairs of knickers.

We've only had one accident since we started on Monday and that was a poo, which she came and told me about straight away and thankfully was nice and solid, well contained in her knickers and easy to clean up. She did learn from that though as she did a couple more that day and they were all done on the loo. So proud. I'm sure there will still be little accidents and who knows how it's going at daycare, but so far so good.

I'm probably slightly paranoid about accidents in the car or supermarket and take her to the toilet repeatedly until she does something. Before we go out. When we get there. Before we leave again. When we get home. I have her potty and a terry toweling nappy on stand-by in the car for emergencies and accidents, although I haven't started carrying them everywhere with me yet. I do put them in the bottom of the pram if there's room though.

I'm dying to phone daycare and see how it's going. I'm not picking her up today as I have my yoga class but I think I'll call just before I leave work and see how she went. Fingers crossed this is it and there's no more going back to daytime nappies.

Phoebe can manage

Phoebe and I were in the garden when she decided to pop back into the house. She stuck her head through the open door and said something about going to the toilet.

Me: Oh, you're going to the toilet are you?
Phoebe: Yep.
Me: Do you want Mammy to come and help you?
Phoebe: No, Phoebe can manage.

[Shuts door and wanders off. Doesn't actually go to toilet though.]