Even when you know what's coming...

you're not always ready.

Disclaimer: This post contains potty training/toileting stories. It may be TMI for some readers.

A little over a year ago, when C was in the hospital with RSV, I was surfing the web while C slept. While browsing, I stopped to read my friend Amanda's blog and was entertained by this funny story. One of my friends came in to sit with C so I could get some fresh air, and she asked me why I was laughing. I said, "Oh, I've just had a preview of my life next year." She read the story and agreed. 16 months later, and I'm here to tell you, folks, it's not so funny when it's happening to you. (It's funny how things work out that way sometimes, isn't it?)

Here's the scenario: P has really got this "potty" thing down. He lets me know when he needs to go (in plenty of time, no less), and we head to the bathroom. In a pinch, he can get his own pants on and off, but I usually help him handle that, and then I stick around for hand washing, etc. C, meanwhile, wants to be "where the party at," so to speak, so he follows us into the bathroom and C and I play a game of "help C remember to keep his hands away from the toilet and Parker's ahem, bodily fluids" while P handles his business. Then I try to keep C from getting his fingers smashed when P closes the "lids" on the toilet (hey, at least he puts the seat down!) and P washes his hands and we're on our way... in an ideal situation.
Yesterday, between P using the potty and putting the "lids" down, C somehow got his hands into the toilet. I'm trying to get P out of the way and working on washing his hands, C is splashing and laughing in quite the animated fashion, and I'm frantically working to get C away from the nastiness and get his hands disinfected. I am successful. I breathe a sigh of relief. We all exit the bathroom. I occupy the boys with something (I can't even remember what), and I return to the bathroom to flush, straighten up, and wipe off the seat. It is at this point that I discover that the bathroom floor around the toilet is wet. Not damp, mind you. Wet. Puddle wet. Sigh... I clean it up. We're golden.
I'm pretty sure, if you're still reading this, you're wondering why I don't take P into the bathroom and leave C outside, crying and banging on the bathroom door. I wonder that sometimes, too. Today I decide to give that another try. (I mean, we'd just had that fiasco, and I hadn't tried the "leave him outside the bathroom" technique for at least three days.) When P and I exited the downstairs bathroom this morning, the decorative teeny tiny pebbles in the bottom of our fireplace were spread out all over the room. Yeah, I think another technique might be in order. Or maybe yesterday was just "one of those days".