After dinner, Josh and I looked over at Olivia, who had been actively playing in her little kitchenette area. She was standing, nay, leaning against the play-fridge with a look of stout concentration.

Any potty-training parent knows that look.

“Do you need to go potty, sweetheart?”

“No,” she answers in her non-verbal language on which we have become experts.

She attempts to continue playing, only to be interrupted yet again.

“Do you need to go potty?”

“No.”

Josh turns to me and suggests maybe it is time to use bribery. “M&M’s,” he suggests.

“We don’t have M&M’s. We have chocolate chips; maybe those would work.”

I turn to Olivia. “If you go on the potty, I’ll give you a –”

And she was off. That’s right. I didn’t even finish the sentence and she was in the bathroom laying down on the rug for her diaper to be removed.

Alas, it was too late. Maybe next time.

Moral of the story: Toddlers understand way more than you think they do.