In just a few weeks, with very little effort from our side, Ingrid’s effectively become nappy-free. I won’t call it potty-trained, because there hasn’t been any training.

And less than a month ago I’d resigned myself to the fact that we’ll probably be using nappies a while longer, and bought more nappies because she’d outgrown the old ones… All these pretty nappies and no one to use them! Ah well, hopefully we can use them for the next child.

Ingrid had been sitting on the potty at home a few times every day, but it was hit and miss, with more misses than hits, and our attempts at letting her run around without a nappy couldn’t be classed as anything other than failures. But we kept the habit going.

When she started going to nursery, three months ago, we told the staff that she sits on the potty sometimes, and they kept up the habit there as well. It turned out that there’s a little toilet at the nursery, child-size, which Ingrid liked even better than the potty.

The little toilet was so much fun that Ingrid’s first successes came at nursery rather than at home. The teachers would ask her if she needed to go to the toilet, and she’d say yes and actually do it. So they started skipping nappies and using panties all day except during nap time. We did the same at home, but still had accidents almost every evening. (They generally happened when she was watching TV – too absorbed by Teletubbies to pay attention to her body.)

This week, though, it seems she’s really mastered it. She’s been nappy-free and puddle-free several days at nursery and the entire weekend. (Bowel movements sometimes still happen in the wrong place.) I was most impressed yesterday when we were sitting in a car on the motorway and she said she wanted the potty. We asked her to wait, drove half a mile to the nearest stop, stopped, and got out the potty – and she waited all that time!