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Okay, so this is an interesting story...N is going through a few stages right now and those stages just intersected about ten minutes ago. One if his current stages is that he wants to help with everything...on his own terms, of course, but he wants to be our helper. For instance, he helped me carry grocery bags in from the car today (only the light bags that did not contain breakable items). He is also helping with laundry by putting articles of clothing into and pulling them out of the washer. (Our dryer is stacked on top of our washer, so he's not quite tall enough to help with this step). He wants to help with cooking, cleaning, landscaping, etc... Well...N is also going through a stage of not wanting to go to bed. He is trying every trick in the book to get us to come upstairs. D and I can distinguish the "real" cries for help vs the "I want attention" cries for help. Fortunately we have a video monitor set up in his room so we can watch/hear him in his room at all times. If something truly warrants our attention we always go up an attend to it. Oh, and I must not forget we are also going through the potty training stage... So, we are going through more stages right now than I can keep track of. At any rate... This evening we put N to bed as usual...he did the fake "crying"routine as usual and I listened to it, but did not want to respond to every wimper because I don't want him to get the idea that Mommy and Daddy will come upstairs for every sound he makes.. N would never go to bed and Dad and I would be exhausted from running up the stairs a million times if we answered his every call. Anyway. I heard one last unconvincing (is that a word?) cry come from his room about ten minutes ago. Once ten minutes passed I figured he was asleep and I'd peek in his room to be sure he was soundly sleeping. So, I slowly and gingerly crept upstairs. As I approached his room I notice an odor...I figured he had a stinky diaper, I would change it and he'd go to bed... Well, as I rounded the corner to his room I found one dirty diaper and two dirty wipes on the floor...I looked at the doorway of my child's room and found my child laying on the floor (we have a gate across his room so he cannot wander the house at night) on the opposite side of the gate. His jammies laying on the floor next to his bare bottom. His response "I had poopy diaper, Mommy. I cleaned it up." Much to my amazement N had taken off his diap (we call it a diap for short), thrown it into the hallway (as he has seen me do a thousand times when I throw his diaps into the garbage pail outsdie his room after I change him), gotten ahold of two wipes, wiped his bottom and thrown the wipes into the hallway to accompany the diap....He found two wipes and wiped himself!!! Befuddled and shocked I immediately called to my husband for back up. I thought for sure our turn with "poo paint" had arrived. I've heard horror stories of children getting ahold of their poo and writing with it on the walls, smudging it in their sheets and coloring with it on their carpet... Ugh!! Had our turn come?? I wasn't sure what to do first...Clean up my child or clean up any possible mess that may have happened to the bedroom? With much hesitation I turned on the light and approached N's bed....No poo! No poo on the bed, no poo on the floor, no poo on the wall... I asked N "Where's your poo? I smell it?? Where is it?" Being the eager little helper that he is, N hopped up off the floor and said " I don't know..Maybe we can find it!" I asked him if it was in his bed, if it was in his pants... Where is it? Then he looked at me (and D. D was in the room at this point) and said "stinky poo is in my diaper." And sure enough all of "it" was neatly conatined in his diaper, lying in the hall outside his room. I was really perplexed by the situation at this point and wasn't quite sure how to feel. Should we scald him for taking off his diap?? Should we be proud of him for being such a good little helper and trying to take care of business himself?? Or should we just laugh?? We decided to explain to N that he needs to poo in the potty for starters...Then we told him if he has poo in his diap that Mommy and Daddy will clean it up. That he should not do it himself because we don't want to get poo on the carpet or the sheets..."or the walls" says N. Then we said if he has a yucky diaper that he can yell "Mommy, I have a poopy diaper" from his room and we will come change him...Wow! All and all I'd say D and I really lucked out in this situation... There's no "writing on the walls" and we are not on our hands and knees scrubbing any carpet right now, so I'd say we came out of this pretty well unscathed. :) My husband's reaction?? "Only our child would rather poo in his pants and clean it up himself than poo in the potty."