Sunday was a pretty busy day for me, but not completely out of the ordinary. I did my usual morning tasks — empty the dishwasher, do last night’s dishes, dress the kids, nurse the baby, get everybody breakfasted. Then I did three loads of laundry, put the baby down for two different naps, made six dozen mini-muffins for Gal Smiley’s preschool, and while I was at it, a pan of apple squares. Also in there was some intermittent online shopping, as we are trying to get some Christmas shopping done before we go down to visit our families at Thanksgiving, so we can avoid having to ship everything later. Oh, and we decided to move the couch from the front room downstairs into the basement, because it was scratching the floor. And then, it was time to make lunch.

So in the middle of all this, Gal Smiley decides spontaneously that she’s done with diapers, and is now Toilet Trained. Big Girl. Underwear Please!

We tried to train her back in the summer and we had some success, but it turned out to just be too much stress for her with school looming and the new baby and everything, so we backed off. We were hoping that once she started school and saw the other kids using the adorable little mini-toilet that they have in the classroom that she’d want to join in the fun too. Apparently, it worked.

So she insisted in sitting on the big toilet (no more little training potty for her, either!), and lo and behold, she had a pee. Then she insisted on wearing underwear (only the Dora Tennis Underwear will do). And that meant that my state of tension ratcheted up about 100 percent, as I tried to continue with the laundry and the muffins and the dishes while also following her around everywhere, asking her about every 30 seconds if she had to pee, and warning her not to do it on the floor.

About a half hour later, she announced she had to pee again, and ran to the bathroom, and got it in the toilet. The BIG POTTY. I thought, Oh my God! That’s it! It’s all over, she’s really trained, we can throw out all those pull-ups sitting upstairs in her closet!

And then about a half hour after that, she peed on the couch. Sigh. And tried to clean it up herself (so very endearing, actually) with a whole box of Kleenex. The really good kind too, with extra softness and lotion built-in. Ah well.

So it’s back to pull-ups for today, but still, I have hope. Imagine, only one kid in diapers! It’s a dream life, I tell ya.