First Day without Diapers.

OK. So yesterday wasn't so bad. I mean, if you don't mind waking up to a room reeking with pee, having to start a load of laundry before you can even get your coffee, having to change his pants and underwear and socks again a half an hour later, then driving to church wanting to bite all your fingernails off wondering if warm pee is seeping into that nice car sear back there, and then at church going through all THREE pairs of underwear and change of clothes that you brought for him, thinking you were bringing WAY to many, I mean, how many accidents can the kid have in two hours? Three, obviously. But is wasn't so bad. I think the highlight was that he was telling me all morning he had to poo, which makes sense because yesterday he didn't go. So we tried and tried and tried. And he didn't go poo in his pants at church, which is always a good thing, and then when he got home, he told me again he had to go poo. So we tried some more. Nothing. I felt for sure that he was going to be one of those boys I have heard about, the kind the go potty fine on the toilet until it comes to poo--then they go hide in a corner to do the smelly business. Well, Ethan just seemed he was going to be one of those kids. He has never once wanted to go poo in the potty. So I just knew we were going to have a poo-in-the-corner kid on our hands.
Well, he was playing fine in his room when all of a sudden he poked his little head around the door with this curious look on his face-- tense, a little scared, and very concentrated. His voice was constricted but he squeaked out, "I have to go poop."
So off to the little potty we went. And lo and behold, the little kid did it, beautifully, holding his Thomas the Train book in his hand, turning the pages between the cutest little grunts you ever heard. For a moment I felt what it must feel like for a mother to be there for her daughter through labor--all this emotion, struggle, and desperateness for them to succeed, but you just have to be there. You can't make them do it and you can't do it for them.
And then the icing on the cake is that he did it two more times later that day. So the whole morning really didn't even compare to the victory in the afternoon. The battle may not be won entirely, but there is no way we are going to lose.
Then this morning I was sure I was going to wake up to another load of pee soaked bedding and the kid was dry as a bone. I kept touching his bottom and the sheets because I couldn't believe it. I almost laughed. He acted like it was no big deal--"yeah, I didn't pee." Then we went to the little potty again, and he filled it up. I about died.
I am still being careful though. I don't want to dehydrate the poor kid but when he asks for milk, I fill just the bottom of his sippy cup (which, o my gosh, when do you have to take those away? O Lord help me.) and then every fifteen minutes I ask him, "Do you have to pee?" Or "Let's go pee!" Like any normal person, he almost always shakes his head no, but I have to ask again, just to make sure, "But honey, are you sure you don't have to go pee?" The irony is when he does go, he is usually the one to initiate it.
More than anything, this has been a lesson for me to trust my two year old. It's enough to fry your nerves almost to the point of burning them charcoal black.