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Hallelujah! Just when we were starting to worry that Abby would be wearing a Pull-Up to her prom, she has—in a matter of hours—begun a love affair with the potty.

It started innocently enough. This afternoon, when I spotted her hovering in the corner doing her unmistakable pre-poop shuffle (sort of like a nervous horse toeing the ground before a thunderstorm), I descended with my usual “C’mon, Abs, let’s go to the potty. You’re three years old, you’re too big for this,” and so on. As usual, my suggestion was greeted with a ten-syllable “Nooooo.”

Today, feeling feisty, I launched a little campaign I’ve dubbed “Poop or Perish.” I stripped off Abby’s skirt and Pull-Up, marched her half-naked into the bathroom, and shut her in with nothing but a potty seat and a Cinderella book. “You can come out,” I shouted, “when I see some poop.”

Forty-five minutes later, after much hysterical crying, three escape attempts, and one episode where Abby clogged the toilet with a week’s worth of toilet paper and tried to convince me her poop was hiding beneath it (it wasn’t, I checked), I was beginning to think my guerilla tactics were doomed. The sitter was due to arrive at any minute so I could head to the bookstore to work, and the toilet was still empty. Still, I’d come so far… it seemed that backing down would be weak and lazy. Leaving was much more preferable. So when Shelby arrived, I filled her in on the operation-in-progress and told her to stay strong.

Fast forward three hours. John had the brilliant idea to bring all three girls up to Borders (in mismatched clothes and, in Claire’s case, a soggy diaper) to invade my cocoon of serenity. As Abby came running full-force across the hushed café, oblivious to the scattering of people quietly reading or typing, she screamed at the top of her lungs, “MOMMY! I went poopy in the potty!!!! THREE TIMES!!!!!”

Logically, I knew I should be mortified at the public announcement, but I was too damn excited. After pumping for details no-one but a mother would want to hear—size? consistency? amount of toilet paper?—I called the sitter, who confirmed that yes, Operation Poop or Perish had eventually succeeded.

During a celebratory dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant, Abby announced that she had to use the potty—not once, but four times. During her final trip, she and Savannah commandeered the only two stalls for a full fifteen minutes, describing in loud and extensive detail the fruits of their labors. I finally had to physically pull them out, promising plenty of toilet time later.

Back at home, it became clear we’d created a monster, one who had developed an all-encompassing fixation with the commode. She sat on it for a full hour, upset to discover that she couldn’t pee and poop on command. “You have to go when your body is ready,” I tried to explain, but that wouldn’t do. Abby has never had a whit of patience, and waiting for her digestive system to catch up to her potty fixation was no exception.

We finally had to pry her from the toilet to take her to bed, a far cry from just six hours earlier when I’d dragged her kicking and screaming into the bathroom. Abby wanted to know what would happen if she had to go later. I told her that if she needed to pee in the middle of the night, she could come wake me up and I’d take her to the potty. “Oh, I will,” she assured me, smiling at the prospect.

Whose idea was this, anyway?