A Gift for Mommy

Something magical happened at our house on Saturday night. And no, it's nothing about Christmas...it's all about poop. If that is TMI for your eyes, then please feel free to stop here. As I say all the time, Brooke is changing and growing by leaps and bounds, and her vocabulary truly amazes me. Saturday evening we were playing and she "passed gas" a couple times, saying "toots" and giggling. So I asked her, "Brooke do you need to go poop?" Her reply, "Uh-huh....potty?" Mine was of course, "well SURE we can try the potty!" having ZERO expectation of anything actually happening. Brooke has been interested in the potty for weeks and occasionally will ask or just agree to sit on it with no results. She sat down on her little potty, started making her little "push" faces and sounds that I'm sure she sees "other" people do, and after about 10 seconds stood up. I started my typical "goooood try Brookie" praise until my eyes wandered down to the potty. Is that...could that...WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! There was poop in there. She had pooped in the potty. My 19 month old baby actually ASKED to use the potty and actually WENT POOP in the potty! I screamed. I freaked. Mike and Ben came running in and we all jumped around and hollered, hugged her and told her what a great job she did. She was the least excited...she played it all cool like, "what's the big deal guys, I do this all the time" with just a little smile on her face like we were all going crazy. I carried on and on, finally remembered to clean her up and put her pants back on, and after washing our hands went to walk out of the bathroom when Brooke called to me. "Mama!!!" pointing at the potty. "Yuck. Trash." I'd forgotten to dump out the poop! Again, I was so amazed at the fact that my 19 month old was so much more aware and responsible than I was in all my excitement....I will point out that we don't actually put poop in the trash but flush it down the toilet but still...she totally GETS it! Once again I am made well aware that my kids are totally capable of more than I give them credit for. Now, even after many attempts on the potty and much encouragement, she wasn't successful at going on Sunday...but still. The fact that it happened at all is one great first leap toward a diaper free home. Yaaaaaahhhhoooooooo for Brooke!