Over-Confidence.

It's the potty again.  For real.  Rudy's potty training has now gone on for over a year, for approximately a year and a half, if what's going on right now is officially considered a new chapter in the struggle.  I contend that it is.  Because my four-year-old is changing her clothes several times a day after wetting herself.  She's not making puddles on the floor or anything.  It's just enough, and then she frowns and gets quiet and mopey.  Next, when I predictably ask her whether she's wet and tell her to change, she wails and tantrums.  Sometimes she pitters and patters upstairs on her own and comes down all coyly in a new ensemble, as if I won't notice.  But either way, she refuses, often dramatically, to go sit on the potty when I ask her to, even after changing, when her body has given us actual physical evidence that she needs to go.

So, I thought, here we go again with a chart.  After a recent blowout before Thanksgiving, I printed out a new template, inspired by one I remember from my own childhood, when I was having trouble overnight.  And let me tell you, I am waiting to deal with Toot's nighttime dryness.  That girl will probably still be in Pull-Ups at night for a while, and I am obediently following my pediatrician's recommendation on that one, which is basically, wait until she's got about a month of dry Pull-Ups before you do anything drastic.  Anyhow, I remember a chart on our red fridge (my sisters Heather and Danielle are getting nostalgic about that fridge right now) where my mom would draw suns or rain clouds, depending on my bed's condition in the morning.

And I sat down with Rudy and showed her the chart, and I pointed out Monday and Tuesday, and where I had drawn suns to show that she had stayed dry and clouds to show that she had gotten wet.  And I talked calmly and lovingly.  I was hugging her.  I told her that I just knew she could fill the chart with suns, that if she tried, and peed in the potty sooner, she could stay dry, and that at the end of the week, she could get a treat, and that the more suns she had earned, the better her treat would be.  And she nodded and was serious and looked at me with her big blue eyes like, "Yup.  I got it."

"You can do it, Rudy," I said more than once.  "I know you can get so many suns."

And she was thinking, "Yeah I can."  Because later that afternoon, I grabbed the markers out of her hand when I saw that she was filling the chart in herself, all proud and happy, like, "Yeah! I'm doing it!"