Much as I love my cloth diapers over disposables, I do sooooo look forward to being done with diapers altogether.

I mean really. I’ve been dealing with diapers almost continuously since my oldest was born, about seven and a half years ago. Small breaks between each baby, but not enough. Really, not enough.

How I wish we had discovered the delights of cloth diapering sooner.

In the early days, my husband wouldn’t hear of it. It was a tv show about how much waste the things we use produces that showed it for disposable diapers that finally got him on my side. Now he wishes we had done it throughout.

But I’m really ready for potty training. Selene may be only 10 months old, but we’re doing some gentle work with it.

What got us started was noticing that she tends to pee after she and I take a shower in the morning. Bringing her in is just easier than waiting for her to nap, and I obviously cannot leave her in the charge of her older brother, who is only 4, and my oldest daughter is generally at school at the time, and really not ready for that responsibility either.

So, noticing a trend, out came the potty training seat.

She promptly quit peeing right after a shower for a few weeks.

But now she’s doing it again, and yes, in the potty. She doesn’t have it down yet, but she is becoming more aware that her body is doing something and that she gets praised for it. She gets a bit of praise just for sitting there, of course. But I’m getting some awfully big grins when she realizes that she has done something more in there. And she claps for herself.

We’re not aiming for complete training at this point. With three kids it would take more time than I’m up for to do a complete job. I’m just aiming for a relatively young potty training with her getting comfortable with the idea now.

I hope.

My mother likes to talk about how my grandmother always had babies trained by six months old. Of course, disposable diapers weren’t so common then, and I would imagine washing diapers would be a bit more time consuming. That would certainly be motivation, no matter the number of kids.

People do potty train young like that still, and I understand it works. The currently popular name is elimination communication. But I wasn’t ready to go for it then, and am still not ready to go for it now.