How a Potty Can Make Me Happy, and a Little Sad

**As a disclaimer the words poop and potty may appear several times in this post, don’t worry it isn’t messy or gross. Feel lucky next time I may not warn you.**

On our way home from the grocery store today a certain little girl of mine called up to me from her seat “Mom, I wanna poop.”

So of course I asked her if she had pooped or needed to poop. There is a difference after all. If she has pooped then she needs a new diaper as soon as I pull in the driveway. If she needs to poop than well, she needs to poop. Wow, I just looked back and I have already typed some form of the word poop 7 times. Anyway. Since we are not really potty training or even working on potty training I went with the she pooped and needs a new diaper option and told her we would get her a new diaper when we got home in less then two minutes.

So we pulled into the garage and headed inside for a new diaper. Once inside she kept asking for her potty so I steered her towards the bathroom thinking that I would get the stinky diaper off and clean her up and let her sit on her potty.

Well, there was no poop in the diaper but when she sat on the potty she sure did pee. She looked up at me smiling and exclaimed “I did it, Mommy. I did it!” With all the pride written all over her face it was obvious to see this is exactly what she had been planning since she first announced to me that she wanted to poop. Even if her verbiage was a little off.

Now I am not naive. I know that Monkey has not magically potty trained herself this afternoon and that it will most likely be a long while before she is free of diapers. I also know that this is the exception and not the rule and that she may not even so much as look in that potty chairs direction for months after tonight.

The thought of having a potty trained daughter, although exciting, is not exactly what is weighing on me tonight as she sleeps.

My little girl is growing up. I know, this is not a new thing but today was filled with little things hitting me over the head over and over again proving that she is not a baby anymore. There were her feet hanging out of her suddenly little crib this morning, the discussion over which shoes she wanted to wear, the imaginative play with her water bottle and the little people toys and her hand, the way she held my hand in the parking lot without complaining, and the way she told me she was ready to go to bed and rest tonight. Then to top it all off there was my little girl loudly proclaiming, in not so many words, that although she had a perfectly good diaper on her cute little tush she was not interested in anything but the potty.

I know she is going to grow up. I know that. I guess the hardest thing is feeling overwhelmingly excited about where she is headed and aching for where she has been. I guess figuring out how to balance those feelings is a part of evolving as a mother because I am pretty sure I will be feeling this same way on her first day of kindergarten, the day she gets her drivers license and her first job, and the day she leaves my little nest to take on the world from her own home. Just to mention a few.

So does anyone have any advice for how to evolve into the mother who handles these changes with ease?