A New Phase?

Today I walked into the girls' room as I was bustling around doing chores upstairs and came upon Mary (4) changing (20-month-old) Margaret's diaper. I asked what was going on and Mary replied jubilantly:

"I'm learning how to be a mommy!" (Especially nice to hear, given the history.)

I checked the scene. It was a wet diaper, not a dirty one. Mary had obtained the correct supplies. Margaret was entirely placid in her submission to being changed. All in all, it looked good.

Am I entering a new phase? This is the phase I hear about sometimes from other mother-friends, for example when one might mention an older child changing a diaper or an older child being in charge of toddler bedtimes. I remember a humorous story from an online friend who has 10 children or so and how startled she was to have to resume any diaper and potty duties when she and her husband went on vacation with only the baby in diapers and the potty-training toddler. Those duties had been long-ago transferred to older children!

Will this fourth baby finally be the one whom I can hand off briefly for a six-year-old child to hold and bounce while I make dinner? Can a girl dream?

All I know is that tonight I was making dinner and, in those final moments when it was all coming together and a sauce had to be "stirred continuously," I noticed that Margaret had a very wet diaper. Had it just been me, I would have left her in it for five more minutes in order to get dinner on the table. But I paused and asked, uncertainly, "Mary, would you like to change Margaret's wet diaper?" She leapt at the chance, I handed her the supplies, and the task was completed to satisfaction.

Mothers further down the path are chuckling at me now, knowing this is only the next step, the one that follows when I began assigning each child the duty of "playing with Margaret whatever she wants so she won't cry" while I homeschool the alternate child. Those mothers know what even greater help is coming along. And mothers a few steps behind me on the path probably can't see the forest for the trees, struggling to imagine having someone else to change a diaper for them or to do anything that is an aid and not an added burden.

It's an exciting time!

*****

And in related news, I wave the white flag and submit to Margaret's insistence that I begin potty training her. For the last couple of months, she has been showing good signs of interest, such as telling me before she dirties a diaper or telling me when she has just wet one and wants a change. But I kept resisting, thinking, hey, I'm in my second trimester, I can't (won't) possibly take on the energy required to potty train, especially the extra energy involved in teaching a child on the younger end of the spectrum. No, no, won't do it. I went from part-time ECing mother to actually telling Margaret, as she begged me to put her on the potty, "No, Margaret, you're wearing a diaper, you can use it!"

Apparently Margaret is more persistent than I because she has worn me down with her insistence of sitting on the potty. I mean, when she's trying to strip her clothes off and is climbing atop the thing, what am I to do? So, I'm 33 weeks pregnant and actually beginning casual potty training. I maintain that I won't put tons of effort into it, but I'll follow her lead, despite how much harder it is to potty train than just change diapers.

So far this week: quite a few successes and the only "failures" because I refused to respond to her fast enough. Margaret is my big girl and so proud of herself. (FYI, don't think I'm under the impression that starting early means Margaret will be trained early. I've seen it happen plenty of times among my friends, but I'm too traumatized, so to speak, after Mary self-trained beautifully at 18 months and then took a year of battling and backsliding for me to have any expectation of what might happen this time around.)