I had no idea how she would handle the whole pool scenario because her daddy and I have been the world's most uptight parents to this point in her young life and refused to let her as much as dangle her pinkie toe near the edge of a swimming pool.
But last weekend, we put our brave faces on and decided she was big enough now that it was time to let our little girl experience some freedom in the form of a nice cool swimming pool on a warm summer day. And it was immediate love at first dip.
We "swam" around and splashed for a little while, but we quickly discovered that Amelia much preferred to float on the big "boat" rather than swim. So we hoisted her up in her boat and played lots of rounds of imagination play of Mickey and Snow White go to the store.
After a full day of pool floating, hamburger & hotdog eating, and quality time with my favorite people, we called it a day and headed back to Louisville, a little more sunburned and a lot more happy.
As I thought back on the events of the day, it dawned on me that the words were best described by Mr. Ice Cube when he said, "Today was a good day."
Little did I know that when I woke up on Sunday, my weekend was quickly going to go from good to great when Amelia surprised me with a special present.
Y'all. It finally happened.
Amelia went poo poo in the potty!
Queue the mama happy dance!
So here is how it went down. We were in the living room playing when all of a sudden, I noticed that she was making a face. You know...that certain face that toddlers make when something is about to "go down".
And so I jumped up and said, "let's go to the potty, hurry, quick!", to which she quickly turned me down because of course. So my mom instincts kicked in and I said, "if you go to the potty, I'll give you a sucker!"
Apparently, those were the magic words. Because she ran down the hallway and let me sit her on the potty with absolutely no struggle. Wow. Bribery. Who knew that was the key to parenting success all along? Never mind the fact that I didn't actually have a sucker anywhere in the house to give her once she was done. But I would address that hurdle later.
Back to the play-by-play. So instead of Amelia needing to "drop the kids off in the pool" at this moment, it turned out that she only had to go tinkle. But still, tinkling in the potty is highly regarded as a big deal in this training phase so much bathroom celebrating ensued thereafter. And because she has a mind like a steel trap, she quickly asked about her reward.
Thankfully, she thought I had said something about a soccer ball rather than the word sucker, so she ran down the hall to find her soccer ball so that we could play. Well, that worked out quite nicely for dear old suckerless mom here.
So fast forward to about 30 minutes later when again, I saw "the face". I knew this time we were gearing up for a more serious potty situation so I had to kick my bribery up a notch. Because mama didn't raise no fool, I quickly exclaimed "Amelia, if you go to the potty, I'll give you a cookie!" Never mind the fact that I didn't actually have any cookies in the house.
With a bit of hesitancy, as she mulled over the pros and cons of receiving a cookie versus overcoming her fear of going poo poo in the potty, she finally decided the cookie was worth it and ran down the hall to the potty.
I'll spare you the details of the big event itself. But let me just say that when the dirty deed was finally done, I actually had a split second of partial insanity when I was so excited that I considered taking a picture to document. And then common sense slapped me upside the head, and I realized that no one in the blogosphere cares to see a picture of my daughter's doo doo. Come to think of it, even as her own mother I don't ever need to see photographic evidence of the event.
But to say that we did a happy potty dance after her big success would be an understatement.
Now my only problem was to figure out where I was going to find a cookie.
Yay for a weekend full of family, swimming, bribery, and pottying like a rockstar!
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