This time I mean it

But first, some administrative stuff. Have you noticed my new thingy? Yes, it's lovely, isn't it? Oh, and also, I have a clever whatsit now that picks out four related posts, with or without pictures, and links to them at the bottom of every post. I'm not sure if it uses the tags, or possibly magic, but I love that it's giving some love to lesser-spotted posts, and personally I have found when I saw such a thing on other friends' blogs, that it drew me in and brought me to lots more interestingness, so I hope it does the same for you.

And then, when I was thinking about how to lure you people in and enmesh you in my fascinating word-tangles - I mean, how best to serve your needs as readers - I decided to do away with the silly and self-perpetuating "Popular recent posts" section in the margin and instead make a new page called Cliff Notes, which lists a few of my favourite blog posts and serves as a sort of potted history of what's been going on here and what I like to write about.

If you'd like to nominate a post to go there, I'm always open to suggestions, by the way.

(Cliff Notes, for my non-American readers, are those yellow-and-black-covered summary texts you can buy so that you don't have to read the whole book. Not that I've ever owned any such thing.)

See the link over there under the About Me section? There it is.

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That's enough of that.

I vowed not to mention this until we were at least a week in, but then I changed my mind. So what if I end up eating my words (again) in two days' time? Will you scorn me? And will I know? Will you stop reading entirely because I jumped the gun and blogged about something without giving it due thought and process? Well, fine, I never liked you anyway.

No, not you. Come back. You don't even know what I'm going to say yet.

On Sunday, which was exactly one month after her third birthday, I said to Mabel, "Let's put on your new dress for your friend's party," and she said to me, "I want to wear underpants." And I did not stand upon the order of my going, but went at once and fetched said underpants from the ranks of their brethern where they have been waiting patiently ever since June, being the last time she was potty "trained". I also took with us a spare pair, and a pullup, and an extra outfit just in case, because I'm not thick, me.

Luckily, the host is a wonderful, laid-back mother who greeted my news of an undefended bottom on arrival with "It's not a party until someone's peed their pants." Indeed. And Mabel successfully came to me twice and had me take her to the bathroom, before the third time telling me that she had indeed peed her pants just a little. That was pretty good going for a birthday party, and I certainly wasn't swooping down on her to check every ten minutes, because there was wine and spinach puffs and entertaining people to talk to and my son wasn't hiding under my legs like last year - he was happily playing with the birthday boy's brand-new robot and eating his weight in potato chips.

Yesterday I casually produced more underpants with the day's clothes, not sure how it would go down, but she was happy to put them on and tell everyone at school, at the top of her voice, that she was wearing underwear. She came home dry, wearing the same thing she'd set out in, and then proceded to motor through four pairs of bottoms in about two hours.

This may be the pattern for a while yet. Today I was all set to announce, in foolhardy manner, that this was it, no turning back, pullups for bedtime only... and then she took an extra-long nap, woke up soaked, and tearfully demanded a diaper for the rest of the afternoon.

Like I said the last time Ted, it won't happen again.