I have to admit that I was heading into today with a pretty pessimistic attitude. Mallory’s teachers have been having a lot of good luck with her using the potty at school. Some days she’ll go without having to change her pull-up at all. The only problem is that the same level of excitment about using the potty doesn’t seem to follow her home. On Friday, her teacher finally said those magic words. . . “We are ready for big girl panties.”

Could it be true? Could we be on the verge of saving $120,000/year in diapers? I left school excited, however over the weekend, Mallory did not volunteer or cooperate with going to the potty once. Nada. Zilch. So I was a little less than excited about giving it a try today. My fear was only reinforced when Mallory exclaimed to me about 1/2 mile from her school that she had “pee peed in her panties”. Sure enough, her pants were wet, so I took her into school first thing wet. Her teacher was nice enough to take it from there.

I wondered a few times throughout the day how well she would do. I truly expected to come to school and find her back in pull-ups. When I arrived, a teacher (not her normal teacher) told me that she had a small accident and she changed her pants. But to my surprise, she was still wearing panties. This mean that she had only had one accident at school that day… what a BIG GIRL.

Then the true test. Mallory and I were headed to the mall to meet Angie and Calen and get pictures taken with Santa. Would we risk having her unload on the big mans knee? What if she dropped a bomb in line when we were next to go? After much discussion, we opted to give it a try. We took an extra set of pants and some pull-ups, just in case. And we kept reminding Mallory to let us know if she needed to pee.

The line was about 45 minutes… not too bad. About halfway through, Angie took Mallory to potty, and she went. GOOD STUFF! I spent the rest of time in line talking to Mallory about Santa… she seemed excited about the whole deal and said she was going to sit on his lap and tell him she wanted a ‘treat’ for Christmas (carryover from Halloween I guess). We watched lot’s of other kids sit on Santa’s lap, so I really thought she was going to do it. And she almost did.

I think she made the decision to opt out of the lap sitting about 2 feet from Santa. Something about seeing him up close I guess that changed her mind. Not surprisingly, Calen didn’t have a big problem with it. But Mallory ended up on my knee. They do a pretty good job of cropping dads out of the picture, so it’s not too obvious, but I think you’ll agree that her body language is not one of “I’m enjoying my time with Santa”. We took what we could get in terms of pictures, and I’ve posted one below for your viewing pleasure.

Afterwards we had a healthy chinese dinner in the food court. Mallory told Angie about halfway through that she needed to potty and so off they went. I’m pleased to say that she once again pee peed in the potty. Zero accidents all evening. We got home, changed into a pull-up for sleeping and said our night-nights. I believe she was out before I left the room. Angie has Calen and I don’t believe she is so lucky tonight.

I’m once again optimistic about the potty training. Maybe the big girl panties was just what she needed. I’m sure we’ll have some accidents (preferably on Angie’s watch), but we’ll get there quick I think. Now if I can just get her to mow the grass.