I Did a Tinkle!

Tonight, Claire took her first big step away from diapers.

This was the first time she did it at home, anyways. Claire has purportedly had some luck with using the potty at school, where she had been going diaper-less this week. Claire did have some accidents at school over the last few days, as proven by the wet shorts coming home with her in the evenings. But besides the wet clothes and several fruitless attempts at home, Kit and I had been pretty much in the dark about potty training. Tonight, though, Claire finally let us in on her potty training success.

After playing at the Abbott Avenue park for a while, we all headed to Dickey's Barbecue Pit for dinner. At the restaurant, Claire started wiggling around and looking worried and then sort of screamed, "I don't want to go pee-pee!" Kit took her to the bathroom for another fruitless attempt. Claire repeated this exercise a few minutes later, and this time I took her to the bathroom with no success. On the five-minute drive home, Claire worked herself up into a lather, screaming that she did not want to pee-pee.

We got home just in time for her bath, a now-dreaded routine which leaves Claire mad and me and/or Kit soaking wet from hold Claire in the bathtub. Interestingly, we had started to think Claire now hated baths because she was afraid of having an accident, as she had done a couple of times, when her daiper was off. As if to confirm our suspicions, Claire had recently started in on her same routine about screaming, "I don't want to pee-pee!" during her baths.

But as always, we put Claire on the potty before her bath tonight. This time, after a couple of minutes, she declared, with a smile on her face, "I did a pee-pee!" Punctuating the point, I could hear a tinkle sound in the water. Kit and I jumped around and cheered and clapped, and Claire seemed real proud. We put a congratulatory sticker on the "My Potty Poster" that Noni had given us.

The bonus was the usual screaming and fussing was absent during her bath. It was just a relaxed, civilized bath. Afterward, Claire even wanted to use her fun green froggie towel, which she had not asked for in a long time, and she declared with a smile that she was Katie the Frog. It was the most relaxed I had seen her (and myself) for bathtime in weeks.

This is just the start of diaper-independence, and I am sure many accidents and challenges lay ahead, but at least Claire is on her way now.

A Girl Named Leo

These days, Claire won't tell you who she is, but she sure will tell you who she isn't.

The other day, Kit said, "Let's go to dinner, y'all" and Claire responsed, "I'm not a y'all!" We couldn't tell whether Claire was intentionally making a joke, but it was funny either way.

Today when I picked Claire up from daycare, her teacher, Ms. Laura, said "Goodbye, sunshine!" to which Claire, of course, responded, "I'm not a sunshine!" Claire had a coy smile on her face when she said it, so I think it was actually meant as a joke. Ms. Laura got a chuckle out of it too.

Even if you call her by her actual name, that is "Claire", she takes exception to it. She insists on going by June or Leo (from Little Einsteins), Dora or Diego, also of TV fame, or one of her classmates like Ian or Sydney. If I say, "It's time to go to school, Claire" she insists, "I'm not Claire! I'm Diego!" She also insists that Kit and I are Dora or Boots or Leo or someone else to go with her character. We don't really "do" anything anything else to act like these characters, but Claire seems to get a kick out of it anyways.

By the way, she does not just occasionally pretend to be Leo or Dora or whatever. She does it all the time, all day. You can never get away with calling her Claire, even during the course of an entire weekend. It is always, "I'm not Claire, I'm Leo", sometimes even if you did not actually call her Claire. You might simply say, "I'll be right back", and she will respond, "I'm not Claire, I'm Diego." I guess she just wants to be sure we know.