Wish me luck.....

Monkey woke up this morning with a dry diaper. Which is one of the signs that she is ready to start potty-training! Wow. Woohoo! She's on her way to really becoming a big girl! No more diapers!!! Only, her school has me a little wary about this process.

See, Monkey is enrolled at a wonderful daycare that follows the Montessori method. Most days, this means that her school (if we have parent-teacher conferences, I'm calling it a school, dammit!) is a daycare on steroids. And I don't mean steroids in a nasty cheating Barry Bonds and (you too??? sigh, my heroes are cheaters...) Roger Clemens way. No, what I mean by "on steroids" is that it is a place where I would LOVE to spend my time!

It has two indoor gyms and a pit full of balls and cool toys and music lessons and field trips to the park and tables and chairs that are Monkey's size....so let's just say that this place is actually worth what we pay. (and um, that's a LOT, thank-you-very-little Manhattan you price-gouger you...)

But, what this also means is that they never, EVAH, take the easy way out. If a child is throwing a tantrum because he or she can't get the lid off of a can, do they take the lid off to stop that infernal whining? Nope. They sit down, talk to the child in a reasonable and kind manner, and show her how to take the lid off by herself. Like a BIG girl.

The same mentality holds true with....dun dun duh......potty training; they.......don't........allow.............pull-ups.

The theory is that pulls-ups (like diapers) do such a great job of keeping the liquid off of the skin that it isn't uncomfortable to wear a wet pull-up for minutes, even hours! (This is how kids pee their diapers yet sleep, blissfully unaware, through the night. Thank you pampers, I love you! My undereye bags thank you!). So no pull-ups, or they never become aware of their bodily functions.

Oy.

Yup, they use "training pants" which are essentially thick cotton undies. So the kids pee their underwear, and get the icky wet sensation. Which they want to avoid...and learn to avoid by using the potty.

Ok, I get this. It makes perfect sense. Only this also means that you need to bring tons of clean clothing to school each week (since they might pee themselves, and their pants, a few times each day...). And, you have to have extra shoes on hand. So when the pee rolls down their legs and puddles in their shoes, they have something to change into.

Ugh. I am reminded, yet again, how much I luuuuuve diapers. Did I mention that I am slightly anal and don't like messes? And am maybe a bit of a germaphobe?

The idea of cleaning out a potty chair grosses me out. It is one thing to diaper a baby, with squishy mustard-poo, and then to move into stinky poop once they eat solids....but this is all nicely, and mostly neatly, handled by a diaper. That you throw out.

Soon, I'll be washing undies (and clothes, and shoes too, apparently) that are full of poop and pee. Here's hoping she gets potty-trained in record time!!

So, yeah, wish me luck!