Sometime over the last couple of weeks, Marcel began reaching the light switch without getting on a stool or chair. Just prior to that, Marcel learned to turn door knobs.
Meanwhile, Tristan combined two skills–turning over and putting something in her mouth–when she rolled to her side, pulled her pacifier into her mouth and went to sleep.
The biggest development on the new achievements scale, however, was when Marcel peed in her bed.
This had never happened before because, frankly, my wife and I were conscientious about putting Marcel in pull-ups at bedtime. This night, however, we weren’t conscientious.
The next morning, Marcel jumped into our bed and got under the covers. Everything was unusual about this.
Normally, if she wakes up before us, she just calls for us to come get her out of bed. If she does come into our room, she usually declines getting into bed and, instead, urges us to take her downstairs for chocolate milk and television. On very rare occasions, she’ll get into bed with us, and she did just that this time.
And when she did, I noticed that her pajama pants did not match her pajama top.
Mismatch pajamas aren’t just rare in our household. They are nonexistent. My wife is a stickler for things like that, so when Marcel hopped into bed with mismatch pajamas, not only did my antenna shoot up, but my mouth shot open.
“Marcel,” I queried, “what happened to your pajamas?”
“I changed them,” she responded. She refused, however, to explain why. She just got into our bed as happy as could be. Like mismatch pajamas, Marcel changing her bottoms is nonexistent.
Even as a newborn, Marcel never much minded dirty diapers. I distinctly remember telling our favorite Argentinian musician how grateful I was for that trait, only to have him educate me on the pitfalls of rarely-changed, over-full diapers. Warnings notwithstanding, Marcel and I came to learn the consequences of delayed diaper changes the hard way, including Marcel becoming comfortable with wet and soiled underwear…while sitting on the sofa.
So to hear say that she changed herself, unprompted, raised all kind of alarms bells. I got out of bed to check on her room. When I entered her room, I found an even more startling thing: I found a made bed.
Now, my wife is about as anal about makign the bed as she is about storing pajamas in matching sets, but I never seen her teach Marcel how to make a bed and never seen Marcel actually care about making a bed. I mean, she’ll tell that it’s her job to make the chocolate milk, cook the dinner or plant the flowers. She does not, however, tell you that it’s her job to make the bed. But that morning, it was.
And it was my job to unmake it.
When I pulled back the covers, my suspicions were confirmed. The tell-tale wet spot revealed that Marcel had peed in the bed. But far from being upset, I was grateful. Marcel was finally ashamed of messing herself. And, for the next couple of days, Marcel insisted on going to the potty before the “rain and mud” came.
We’re told we aren’t supposed to shame our children into potty training. I’m not sure we could if we were allowed. (She’s way too cute to punish, really.) But, given the results, I was sure glad Marcel was willing to take up the cudgel.
