Since Ella was traumatized by the weeks and weeks of constipation, she has totally given up on potty training, & we are back to full time diaper changes. And oh the diapers. If I’ve ever heard a solid argument for being childless, it is the prospect of never changing a poopy diaper before you’ve had your morning coffee. I’m trying not to push Ella towards potty training, but I’m so sick of diapers, especially since Ella is fighting during them now and a poo covered foot coming at my face is just not my idea of fun. To make it a tiny bit more bearable, we’ve started asking Ella to name the parts of her body that we are cleaning, and she has fallen in love with the word “vagina”.

“Mama has ‘agina, Alice  ‘agina, Ella ‘agina! Yayyyyy ‘aginas!”

Which is all well and good while getting a diaper change, or taking a bath, but it’s when we are in the grocery store and Ella suddenly realizes that “Daddy no ‘agina?! Where’s Daddy’s ‘agina?! Mama! Mama! Listen, Ella ‘agina, Alice ‘agina’ Mama ‘agina, where Daddy ‘agina? Where’d it gooooo?” that I start to wonder if I am cut out for this gig.

I’m surprised it took two years for Ella to pick up the word, since one of my favorite moments from the first year of Ella’s life was reading the monologue “I was there in the room“(video not of me) for  a production of the Vagina Monologues when she was 3 months old. I remember watching her in the wings of the stage in a friends arms, knowing that she will grow up in a home where being a girl wasn’t second best. Where she will know that she is capable of anything. Where the word ‘vagina’ won’t be shameful, because if we can’t even say the name of the body part, how can we begin to address the violence done to it?

So? Vagina vagina vagina. Say it until it doesn’t sound like a word any more; until you don’t mind standing in the shampoo aisle, explaining that only girls have vaginas, and that they are a wonderful thing to have. That they are powerful, and can do anything they want to do. “Even… dwive a bus?” Yes baby, as long as it has the proper endorsements on it’s license.