Potty talk - conversations with Brenna & Melany

Between the ages of about 3 to 7 kids seem to become fixated on the potty. No trip to a resturant is complete without at least 5 trips to the bathroom and a careful inspection of each and every toilet stall. It's enough to make a parent wish that spraying your child down with Lysol in public wasn't cause for someone to call social services.
(Just for the record, I have never sprayed my child down with Lysol in public or in private.)

And don't even get me started on the facination kids have with port-a-potties. Brenna is completely enamored of them. Recently we went to watch Michael run a 1/2 marathon. The course passed right by our house making cheering for daddy easy and convenient. B and I are walking along the sidewalk cheering for the runners. We get to the water station where they also have a row of port-a-potties...

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Porta_Potty_by_David_Shankbone.jpg

B: Mommy, I need to go potty (pointing to the port-a-potty)
Me [think quick and come up with a good reason why she can't use one of those nasty, germ infested cesspools]: Oh, you can't use those potties. Those are only for the runners. If you need to go potty we can go back to the house.
B: Oh.

A few weeks later we are driving in the neighborhood and we pass a construction site, complete with port-a-potty.


B: Look Mommy!! There's a runners potty!!

Sweet! I have succeeded in athletically brainwashing my child.

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Melany, age approximately 6.

It's snowing. We have been out to play and all the snow clothes are soaked (because southerners don't know from gortex). Mel comes to me and asks if we can go back outside. She has on a slightly damp scarf and mittens.

Mel: Ima, can we go back outside to play in the snow.
Me: Yes, but you need to wear a hat.
Mel: Oh. So we don't get crap on our head?
Me: Yes...Wait! What?! Mel, what did you just say?
Mel: I said, so we don't get crap on our heads.
Me: Uhhhhh.............
[not much useful came out of my mouth after that. I mean, she used the word correctly and in context but, well, um, she was 6, and uh.....yeah, I punted and told Michael to tell her mom that she needed to be careful about her language.]

I did learn something from that encounter, however, and when Ella, at about the same age, said something about crap I asked her if she knew what it meant and explained that it meant "poop" and was not a nice thing to say. This seemed to be a much better approach than stuttering and finally babbling something about "crap" being not a nice thing to say and um, yeah, well, don't say it.

Nice to know I'll be prepared in a couple years when B pulls the "crap" card.

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And as long as we're on the subject of crap. Melany's take, at approximately age 5, on the requisite number of bathrooms for a house...

Up until about 18 months ago, we lived in a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house. The house was built in 1923 when apparently people only owned 2 sets of cothing and nothing else, so storage space was limited. We own 10 bikes and enough bike crap (there's that word again) to open our own shop, along with the astounding collection of random stuff that 2 people collect over time. With no garage, the unfinished attic was our friend and we spent a lot of time pulling down the ladder from the ceiling to go "upstairs" to get this, that, or the other thing.

http://www.lemondrop.com/2009/12/22/
gift-guide-new-parents-friend-who-just-had-a-baby/

Mel: Ima, you and daddy need more pottys.
Me: We do?
Mel: Yes, at mommy's house we have 3 pottys, but you and daddy only have 1.
Me: Well, yes, you're right. We only have one bathroom, because our house is small and we don't have any place to put another bathroom.
Mel: You could put one upstairs.
Me: Mel, we don't have an upstairs.
Mel: Yes you do. Where daddy goes to get the bikes!



hmmm, maybe a port-a-potty in the attic was the answer...