After months (and months) of asking Wilson if she was ready to start wearing her big girl undies and use the potty, she finally decided this week that now was the time and she was doing this.

Before I go any further, let me remind you: this is not the first time I have blogged about potty-training and also not the first time I have admitted that I know nothing about potty-training. Five kids in and I still don’t know how to do it in a sure-fire way. Perhaps that has something to do with each kid being their own person, eh?

All I know is that in the past, we always had the incentive of places to go and things to do in order to entice children to start using the bathroom at a certain age. If 2020 hadn’t happened the way it did, we would have started WA with preschool in Jan 2021 (i.e. now) and that would have been our motivator to get on and off the pot, so to speak. But 2020 did what it did and we don’t go anywhere now, so what was the point in forcing the issue besides the fact that that is one thing I do know about potty-training…until the kid is actually ready, force is not the way.

So she got undies last fall (trainer style) and then in her stocking for Christmas (regular style) and still she told me an empathic, “NO.” each time I asked if she wanted to wear them. That is, until two days ago on Wednesday, when apparently she decided that a new dawn for our country was as good a time as any to start a new chapter in her own story, too.

And honestly? She rocked it. She went the entire day in undies (minus nap) and had no issues. Same on Thursday, but even better because she shocked everyone in the house by fulfilling both *ahem* duties on the potty-seat before the day was done. I mean, I have never been more shocked/pleased to hear a kid yelling, “I pooooooooped!” from the bathroom (and yes, that is the Bat Signal in our house; classy, I know.). She totally earned that handful of M&Ms, I tell you (not a technique we’ve ever used before, but again, 5th Kid. What do you do?).

This morning? Same thing. Undies all the way. Getting herself to the bathroom time and time again (we had hot chocolate after playing out in the cold, snow-globe-falling snow), no problem. And then nap time came and all the independence came right back to bite me in the butt because Not-So-Baby Girl decided she was NOT going to wear a diaper for today’s nap because, because, well, who knows? She’s 3? She thinks she a pro already? She can actually do it?

I guess we’ll have to see if she really can/does because I wasn’t willing to have the knock down, drag out fight to get a diaper on her, so I made her use the bathroom and then we did our normal go-down-for-nap routine with her in not a diaper, so help me Sweet Baby Jesus.

Will this work? I highly doubt it. She’s still in a crib with tall sides and assuming that none of her siblings have taught her how to crawl out of it, she’s stuck there until I get her up and I am fully, fully counting on there being a mess when I do. But I’ll still have time before bed to get her sheets and whatnot washed, and no matter what happens, she will be in a “night-night diaper” because Mama and Daddy don’t play when it comes to messing with nighttime sleep. But for now? Sure. Fine. This is a gamble I’m (sort of) willing to take.

On the flip side, as terrifying as this all is, it’s also terribly exciting because if we can make this happen, we will finally (11.5 years later) be out of diapers in this house. Now that is a New Era also worthy of great celebration (and definitely more chocolate for all).

Update: she did not make it through the nap unscathed but the mess was not the mess I feared, so I will take it! She also gave me a sweet little apology and agreed that she would put a diaper on for nap the next time mama asked, so I think we came out of that little experiment just fine.