Last month, Christina and I put a reward chart on the bathroom wall: a bunch of empty squares. We told Olive that every morning that she woke up with a dry diaper, she could put a sticker into one of those squares. When it filled up entirely, she'd be allowed to wear underwear to sleep. Between ourselves, Christina and I agreed that she would get one mulligan, but if there were two accidents, Olive would have to start over.

Sleep diapers are the last sort in the house; they're indistinguishable from day diapers physically, but they're different in that they are part of the bedtime routine for a big girl who can wear real underwear during the day. She's been wearing sleep diapers, and no day diapers, for something like seven months now.

This morning, Olive put the last sticker onto her reward chart. She was excited to tell me after the fact that she's picked a nice red one. We're moving the chart from the bathroom wall into her bedroom, and the bedtime routine is going to be different tonight, moving forward.

It's hard to know how to feel about all this. On the one hand, she's graduated entirely from diapers well before her third birthday; there are lots of kids who take much longer than this. We're really proud of her! On the other hand, she still very frequently wakes up at night and comes into bed with us, and she did end up using the mulligan; there's a real concern that she will eventually wet our bed.

Three years ago, I was mildly anxious about the upcoming requirement to keep a newborn in clean diapers; it was one of the smaller responsibilities of having a kid, but possibly the grossest, and I didn't yet know whether I'd be able to handle it well. This morning, Christina removed from Olive what may be the last diaper she ever wears in her life. It is very weird that my emotions persist in parsing this as a loss, but they don't always respond properly to logic.

We did promise this, though, and she held up her end of the bargain. We're putting a towel under the sheet in her bed and ours, and hoping for the best. She is ready to grow up a bit more, and it's up to use to enable that growth.