A woman from our church who lives on a small farm told me this story the other day:

She recently purchased two tiny new lambs, whom she’s been keeping in the house until they grow big enough to transfer to the barn. (Aside: the lambs are named “Goodness” and “Mercy.” Plans are to add a “Shirley” soon. As in: “Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy will follow me all the days of my life.” Get it?!? – nudge, nudge – Psalm 23?)

SO, the thing about these lambs is that they trained themselves to use pee pads to go to the bathroom. (Pee pads are those absorbent pads that you lay on the floor, usually for dogs who are left in the house during the day). Here’s how: the pee pads were already laying around the house, because this family happens to have a cat who won’t use the litter box. (Sub-theme to this story: animals are strange). Shortly after the lambs moved in, one of them walked over to a pee pad, sniffed at it, and deduced that this was the place where he should pee. Somehow, the lamb communicated this to his brother, and the two of them have been doing their business on the pee pads ever since.

In my opinion, the funny part of this story isn’t the fact that these lambs are housebroken. The hilarious part is imagining the conversation between the two lambs that resulted in their mutual decision to use the pee pads:

LAMB #1: “Psst! Hey, get a whiff of this! Kinda strange, but I guess in this house you’re supposed to pee on these funny pad thingies.”

LAMB #2: “Weird! Well, okay, if that’s how they do it here….” (shrugs)

This story is my way of telling you that Fiona is potty-training Campbell, and it’s pretty darn cute. I’ve heard about this older sibling-training-younger sibling dynamic, but it’s something else to see it happening under our own roof.

Despite the fact that I write about them in this blog, I am pretty serious about our girls’ privacy. So you will not be seeing any potty pictures, or reading any potty details. Suffice it to say that Fiona is embracing her BIG SISTER status. She gets Campbell set up, grabs a book to read to her little sister, kicks me out (“Mommy, GO! I can do this!”), and they spend inordinate amounts of time in the bathroom (which I thought wouldn’t start for another 10 years or so).

After one such successful bathroom foray, I congratulated Campbell: “Great job, Campbell!”

To which she raised her arms in victory and shouted: “Now I can go to preschool with Sister!”