Diaper tales

I read a funny tidbit from the gossip wags today in the SF Chronicle. Apparently Britney Spears, she of the ever-troubled child rearing incidents, was shopping at Victoria's Secret today (where she bought, if you must know, pink g-strings) with her baby. When said baby needed to have his diaper changed, apparently she plopped him down on the floor next to the cash register, did the deed (including asking the VS sales girl to toss out the nappy, upon which sales girl informed her that they "can't put that thing in their trash"), paid and left. At which point, the shocked -- shocked! -- clerks gathered to point and gossip about Brit's recently outrageous behavior. I think the most shocking thing about the whole incident to the sales girls was condition of the floor, which they proclaimed was clearly too dirty for diaper changing (hence Britney was a bad mother again).

I thought this was quite amusing since I'm a serial diaper changer in places that I can assure you are far worse than the Victoria's Secret carpet. Some of the Chinese restaurants where we eat in San Francisco have bathrooms where you hardly want to walk, let alone change a diaper -- but when nature calls, it needs to be answered. Of course it probably doesn't need to be answered in quite such a public fashion as next to the cash register, but I can assure you it's easier there than in the street. I rationalize all of this behavior by assuring myself that it's all building up her immune system. [Side note to SF visitors: my personal choice for diaper changing is the 2nd floor Nordstrom's ladies bathroom, which has a little separate room with two changing tables and a sink. The only drawback is that they rarely fill the paper towel dispenser next to that sink, but they've redone the bathroom recently and it's quite nice.]

Speaking of diaper changing and such, when Walt picked Devon up from Kaaren's the other day, she insisted that Devon was ready for potty training -- and in fact gave us a potty to try out. I'm not entirely sure I believe her, although Devon's quite aware of when she pees (and often points it out, noting, "Pee!" while tugging on her diaper) -- although I might have exacerbated that behavior by exclaiming quite often as I change her diaper that it's "full of pee!" (part of my con to try to get her to let me change it, an exercise which she generally hates). Anyway, Kaaren was claiming that she was really interested in the bathroom and toilet, pointing out that she peed (in her diaper of course), etc. I love the idea of dispensing with diaper changing entirely, but honestly, until I hear more about this from Elaine (our daycare provider, whom I trust far more than Kaaren with respect to knowing Devon's needs), I'm not going to worry about it. Devon, on the other hand, had a grand time this evening with her new potty. My dad gave her a little painted chair from Mexico a few months ago, and she really loves that -- she often drags it around the apartment to sit. This potty is like a bigger, almost throne-like version of her chair (although hideous plastic of course). But she enjoyed lounging in it in the living room, perusing her books, queen of all she surveyed.