Yesterday, after five days of wet underpants and cleaning up the floors, I decided that the diapers were going to go back on little EC and she was going to have a break for awhile, until she got better at controlling her impulses. I made the decision while she napped.

When she woke up, I saw that her diaper was dry, so I thought, what the heck, one more try. Off came the diaper, and with all the underpants downstairs, she ran around naked upstairs while I took care of a few things. And all of a sudden, she stopped…turned…ran to the bathroom…and sat down on her potty, peeing. She snatched a diaper reprieve right at the last moment.

And in the ensuing day and a half, she’s been on fire, getting about 70% of all output accurately directed. That includes several times telling me she needed to go, and then making it all the way to the finish line.

Someday I will look back at my inner impulse to wax poetic about poop and pee, and think I’m being rather silly. But the difference that a day makes is really something. With any luck, this might turn out to be no-diaper November.

Two days ago, little EC started really climbing. There is a rope net in the playground here, and she’d contemplated climbing it before, without success; but that day she just started from the bottom and didn’t stop till she reached the top.

That was a good trick, but what came later was a relief to my back, if also a stab to my heart as I realized how big she’s getting. I had unlatched her carseat straps, but gotten distracted with something else for a second. And she decided to take advantage of that by climbing down out of her carseat by herself…and then jumping out of the car by herself too. Later on, she repeated the feat by climbing into the car and into the carseat on her own.

And now that she’s discovered she can push her hand-washing stool from the bathroom to any other room in the house, nothing is safe and I need to move on from hiding objects from her to teaching her how to look, be gentle, and put things back when she’s done with them.

In other news, real potty training day 1 score: 3 wet pairs of underwear, 0 successful peeing trips to the potty.