A couple weeks ago, Elliot started showing a serious interest in potty training. Up until this point, I was dragging my feet. I wasn’t ready to fully commit until I knew she was. Last Monday, she wanted to wear her big girl underpants to school – so she did – and I didn’t believe Jim when he brought the girls home from school without the “accident bag”. There wasn’t one. She didn’t have a single accident all day. (GO ELLIE!) Then the shameful realization hit me – I guess the only one who wasn’t ready for this was me.

Now we no longer need a diaper bag. For the last week when we’ve had an outing, I’ve been flustered as my normal bag packing routine is off. Our girls are 19 months apart so for the last four years, we’ve always had someone in diapers and I’ve been carrying around the same bag to haul them. This is a graduation of sorts.

While other moms are likely thrilled to shed some of this baggage, tossing their graduation hats wildly in the air, I’m clinging to mine because I’ve always been that person, the – what if I throw my hat and then can’t find it among the others afterward – person. I might as well still be driving around with a ’99 tassel hanging from my rearview mirror, except I didn’t hang anything from my rearview mirror because it was technically illegal in California and something my parents wouldn’t allow in their Volkswagen bus. But, you know, I desperately wanted to.

I get emotional over this stuff. Of course, it’s not the bag – it’s what the bag represents. My babies are no longer babies. Retiring the diaper bag is yet another milestone reminding me that time moves that quickly, even if, as I hold my friend’s newborn baby it feels like a million years ago that our girls were that small. I’m a hopeless cliché.

This chapter of the early years is closing as I zip the bag closed one final time. Now, we travel a bit lighter. Here’s hoping my sappy mama heart will catch up soon.