Two days ago, I walked out into the foyer (“foy-YAY!!”, as little EC calls it) to a little girl who had two shoes on her feet…entirely without my intervention. She’s been taking her shoes off by herself for maybe a month now, but this was new. After we both shouted hooray! a few times, I pointed out that the shoes were on the wrong feet and that I could help with that. I think I earn major Dad points for noticing.

She now is putting her own shoes on reliably. She’s 50% (imagine that!) on getting them on the right feet, but no matter: every time she does it, right or wrong, she jumps up yelling hooray!! and running around with glee. Now here’s a little girl who loves doing things by herself.

Speaking of things that make her shout for joy, pooping is top of the list. Specifically, pooping in the toilet, which we introduced to her probably sometime in July, as a casual “think about it, let us know if you feel like it” kind of thing. Since then, she’s been hot and cold on the idea, but when she’s hot…she’s hot. Today, I greeted her after her nap, and she greeted me with “poop!”. After confirming that said poop was not in her diaper, I offered her the chance to go use the potty. Very happy with that idea, she let me take her diaper off and then bounced into the bathroom, sat on her little potty; got up and down a few times; and finally, feeling it coming, pranced back to the potty, sat, pushed, realized that she had done it, and jumped up with joy so quickly that she brought all that she had produced up with her! I of course praised her efforts even while cleaning up the floor. She was so overjoyed by her success that, when we brought it up to Empirical Mom this evening, she was breathless while trying to recount the tale.

Her favorite part of this story, of course, is how she gets a cookie after successfully doing it.

We’re not too close to dropping the hammer on real potty training yet. We have travels coming up and want to wait at least till after that, and maybe until after Christmas if she’s not 100% on board yet. But really…for a girl who can ride a bike, almost read her own name, count to 30…maybe she’ll be able to poop controllably before the rest of us are ready for it.

Now if I could just get her to stop referring to herself as “you”…