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When we potty trained Thea...

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When Thea was about 3 years old, her auntie sent her a pink potty in the mail.   Thea loved the potty.   She admired it from all angles and sat on it immediately.   Shortly afterwards, one early Saturday morning, Thea woke up with a dry diaper.   As soon as I took off the diaper, I set her on the potty just to see what would happen and… instant success.   She peed right into the potty!   I was so proud.   I bragged about it to Thea’s preschool teacher as we arrived to school that morning.   “Great!”   She said.   “Please send her to school in panties tomorrow, and we will work on it at school as well.”   TOMORROW?   I thought to myself.   I wasn’t really sure how to potty train her tomorrow but I sent her to school in panties.   Each day that week, she just peed in her panties.   Over the weekend, I bought a LOT more panties and a book that some friends of ours had recommended about potty training that they had had success with.   The book recommended that
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When I wasn't ready...

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The other day I was reading a book.   It was a reflective book, one that I turn to when I need a little inspiration.   I’ve read it many times before when suddenly I came across a passage that blew my socks off.   It was so striking, I couldn’t believe that it had been sitting there in that book the whole time.   How could I have missed this amazing passage?   I’ve read this book so many times!   It made me wonder if I had just skimmed over that part before and not really read it or if I had read it the whole time and was just now ready to begin to grasp that concept.   When I first learned about Thea’s diagnosis, I remember the feeling of not being ready, of not being able to really hear the diagnosis.   That part of me thought that after we got out of the hospital, things could just go back to the way they were before.   Our daughter would be perfectly fine.   The diagnosis lingered in the back of my mind, mysterious and hard to understand.   The research article
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When Thea was tired...

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Thea is usually a pretty happy kid…unless she is tired.   When she gets tired, she gets stubborn.   This stubbornness usually involves public humiliation for me.   This summer, we went to the zoo.   It was a warm day, so I rented a stroller, bringing water and snacks so that I could make sure that our day was fun and not overtaxing her body.   At the end of the day, we returned the stroller to the zoo area.   I suspected that Thea was getting tired and beginning to get to her “ unreasonable” stage.   I knew this was the case when, turning around, I found her behind me arms crossed and glaring.   “It’s time to walk like a big girl,” I told her.   She continued to glare.   Our friends had already reached the zoo exit by that time and were probably wondering where we were.   I took a few deep breaths, hoping they weren’t in a hurry to leave. the "unreasonable stage" “Our friends are waiting,” I reminded her.   “Carry me!!!” She demanded reaching up a
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