Photo via Imugur.com
When baby girl was first starting to use the potty she was a year and a half. She wasn't actually using it but she would ask to go after the fact. That lasted a month.
At two, baby girl asked to use the potty and would sit there for a few minutes, asked to be wiped and went off to play. And, then she would dirty her diaper. That lasted a month and then she asked to wear panties. That lasted a day.
I had started writing a blog post about how easy it was for baby girl to be trained to use the potty. I never got to finish it. She was not easy, she did not want to use the potty when she should and it would take another year and a half for her to be diaper free.
I had suspected that when it was time she would just use the potty. I was right but wrong on the time frame.
On the day that baby girl consented to wearing panties I came across this post: Sex vs. Character: What Do We Teach Our Girls? by Lisa Belkin.. It referenced the HuffPost Parents article that ran a letter from an 8-year-old titled "Why Being A Girl Is Wonderful."
Written on a legal pad in rounded kid penmanship, it radiated pride: "We have veginas. We get jobs. We are creative. We have stuff that makes us pregnet. We have milk in our bobes. We are smart. We have power."
The post I never published was going to honor her accomplishment and her womanhood in some way. I wanted to express to her that she owned her vagina and I would refuse to call it by any other cutesy name that was designed to inspire embarrassment instead of pride. I never published that post.
I did eventually go on to write two posts about potty training - one expressing my distress and the other celebrating that it finally happened. So I guess I did post it, eventually, but it was not the roar inspiring one I had intended.
