All My Mother's Rules

Chapter 2: Guilty Conscience

The downside to making Emilia pee herself was that I was the one stuck changing her wet pull-up. Mom hated changing diapers or pull-ups. So guess who's gotten to do that a couple thousand times over the past several years? Yes, yours truly.

In truth, I didn't mind it too much. A wet pull-up isn't that big of a deal to change, and, thankfully, going number two in the toilet was the one part of potty training that Emilia had nearly managed to master.

Emilia cried all the way to the bedroom. She wanted to be a big girl so badly. During this latest attempt at potty training, her failure to learn how to properly use the toilet hasn't been due to a lack of trying. She even managed to reach the big girl panties stage twice, only to be relegated back to pull-ups as the result of accidents.

Our bedroom was barely big enough for one person, let alone two. The only furniture was my bed, her crib, a pair of dressers, and a tiny desk just big enough for my computer monitor. In our old house, we all had our separate rooms with enough space for changing tables and playpens. As I sifted through the drawer looking at Emilia's collection of pull-ups and diapers, the one thing that struck me about her pull-ups was that they were so darn adorable with all the cute cartoon characters on them: Minnie Mouse, Elsa, Ariel, and every other Disney princess imaginable.

My unpaid babysitter duties extended beyond just changing diapers and potty training. Having good manners was another rule Mom heavily enforced, and, again, the responsibility of teaching that to Emilia fell to me. "Please" and "thank-you" were the focus right now, but getting her to do either still required quite a bit of prompting.

After grabbing a fresh pull-up from the drawer, I turned back around to face Emilia.

"And what do you need to tell me now?" I asked.

"I need my pull-up changed," she whined.

I sighed. Emilia really did know better. Even if she was only three.

"And what do you say when you need your pull-up changed?"

"Can you change my pull-up?"

"Sis, you're forgetting the magic word."

"Please," she said finally.

With that, I rolled out a changing mat onto my bed and plopped Emilia onto it. I was glad we were past her terrible twos when diaper changes had been an absolute nightmare. She laid on the bed complacently – I suppose it did feel good to be changed into a dry pull-up – lifting her legs up when I needed to wipe and not struggling even a little as I replaced her wet pull-up with a fresh one, this time with a picture of Ariel on the front. I placed the wet pull-up in the diaper bin and then made a mark on the potty-training calendar to note that she'd had an accident.

I gave Emilia a hug as I set her back down on the floor.

"And what do you say now?" I asked Emilia.

"Thank-you."

"Thank-you for what?"

"Thank-you for changing my pull-up."

You're welcome, but you need to keep Ariel dry for the rest of today or it's back to diapers, you understand?"

Emilia nodded back at me solemnly.

"I will. I will," she said.

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Dinner, even if it was just meatball casserole, had its own sets of rules. All the silverware had to be in exactly the right place. No eating before we had a chance to bow our heads and say grace. No spilling any food. No talking with your mouth full. And, most importantly, you had to eat every last bite of food that Mom put on your plate. You weren't leaving the table until you were completely done.