The other night, my youngest daughter, aged 2 years 11 months, woke up in the middle of the night and called me. "Dad! Daaaaaaaaaaad!"

Her waking up in the middle of the night and calling me is not an unusual occurrence. But on this occasion the reason was. In fact, it was a never-before-used reason. She wanted to make a wee in the toilet.

Younger daughter was out of daytime nappies much earlier than older daughter. In fact, dare I say, she was positively precocious about it. But she still wears them at night. Normally what I would expect to happen around nighttime weaning is she will indicate, in her own subtle way (for example by having a screaming fit that the neighbours down the road can hear), that she wants to start sleeping without a nappy. Then we will put a potty next to her bed and explain that when she wants to wee she should get out of bed and do it in the potty, and after a month or so of us waking up twice a night to change her wet sheets, she will get the hang of it.

But no, not our daughter. On the evidence of the other night, she is going to skip the potty stage and go straight to the "please leave a light on in the bathroom so I can go to the toilet in the middle of the night" stage. Oh my wonderful, advanced daughter, who is going to save us so much money now that we don't have to buy nappies anymore. Oh my brilliant genius daughter, who is going to do her bit for the environment by no longer contributing to the stinky undecomposable heaps of nappies in seventeen hundred billion landfills. Oh my pride and joy of a daughter, who is going to get not one or two but as many stickers on her star chart as she likes.

Anyway, she sat on the loo for a few minutes but there was no wee, so the nappy went back on and we both went back to bed.