Ack! I'm an environmental nightmare, and I've not until the very minute given it more than a passing thought. It's this report that has me choking on my green tea this morning, and giving some thought to changing.

Me! Miss (or Mrs.) Environmentally-aware, former-hippy-chick, green-as-anything, outraged-over-waste, blah-blah, blah, is no longer part of a solution, but a major contributor to a problem. I live in a tropical paradise and what am I doing? I'm trashing up the place, that's what.

It's all about poop and pee, I'm afraid, and my reluctance to force the potty training issue or make a huge deal about bed wetting, and some of this failure is very likely due to the fact that I am, yes, an older parent, and an adoptive older parent at that.

Thirty-some years ago I was pretty hot to trot on the pot ... so to speak ... and was happy to spend no little time encouraging my babies to develop warm and comfy relationships with their tiny toilets. My children's grandmothers were all for strapping babies to potty chairs not long after they could assume the sitting position and hold it for a while, and an entire collection of playthings were designated potty toys in hopes of stimulating some action, any of which received accolades appropriate to the product ... or winning the Nobel Prize for pooping.

Disposable diapers were just coming on the market back then, but not only were they far beyond my financial resources at the time my daughter was allergic to something in them, so I was a cloth diaper-washing maniac for a few years. No doubt, the work eventually involved in keeping two kids clad was quite the incentive for concentrated toilet introduction.

All these years later and ... You know what? ... I really can't be bothered. Sam and Cj are the last babies I'll be raising, and I'm in no hurry to shuffle them off to Grown Kid Land where toilets are used and diapers are behind us and their behinds are simply pantied.

It's not that I'm a really big fan or go all mushy over squished poop between cute little cheeks, but I really don't mind changing diapers, no matter how smelly. The chore keeps me in the mom-of-little-ones loop, and I like that.

I use disposables, so although I do have a lot of laundry, diapers don't make up any portion of it, and disposable wipes take care of the dribs and drabs I formerly would have used a washcloth for, so they get tossed, too. Yes, an environmental horror filling the landfill, and one I've pretty much ignored ... shame on me.

Cj is two-and-a-half and has about as much interest in the potty as a cow has with a coat hanger, and Sam, at almost five, still wears a diaper to bed. These facts don't make me a bad mother, but they sure do increase the waste generated by my family.

Perhaps I should start thinking of potty training as an environmental move. Think the kids will buy it?