Thursday, February 2, 2012

Costco, Revisited

We went to Costco yesterday.

Not noteworthy for most people, I know.   But if you have been around Still Seeking Sanity for any length of time, you know that Costco and my kids have a history.

And sometimes, even when you do your darndest to stop it, history repeats itself.

Yeah.

So my whole plan in Costco has been to avoid the bathrooms at all costs.  It seemed like a reasonable plan, but I forgot the diaper bag yesterday and Drew had filled his diaper to the point that the ever-popular scrape-out-the-bulk-of-it-and-line-it-with-paper-towels backup plan wasn't an option (oh come on, you know you've done that); so he was wearing undies while we were out running errands.  And as any mother of a not-quite potty-trained child knows, if the kid says he has to pee, you take him to pee.

Even if you are in Costco.

We had a chat as we walked down the hallway.  It went something like this, "You will not pee on each other.  At all. Got it?"

I know, that's quality parenting at it's best right there.

Ben was walking down the hallway playing with all the padlocks on the employee lockers and apparently not listening to his mother, because he missed the memo.

So into the bathroom we went.  Emma into her own stall, and the boys and I in another.  I like to keep them close, so I can monitor the flow, if you will.

But I only have two eyes, and there are three flows.  I kept an eye on Grant, to make sure he got his pants down far enough so we wouldn't have a repeat performance.  I watched Drew, who is still learning and is likely to "miss".  However I didn't watch Ben, who was trying to sword-fight with his brother's, uhm, stream and decided that the best place to cross his stream with Grant's was just as it was leaving Grant's body.

So basically, in a nutshell, Ben peed on Grant's legs and pants on purpose.

Once again, I didn't know it was happening at the time.  Grant started screaming as I was holding Drew up to the level he needed to be, and I didn't see it at first.  Then Grant hollered, "BEN!  You are peeing on my legs!"  To which I said something calm, cool, and collected, something like, "Are you freaking kidding me?!?  What did I say about not peeing on each other this time?!?  Ben, what on earth are you thinking?!?"

And the mother of the year award goes to....

Probably not me.

Emma, who was a couple of stalls down, yelled "Seriously, they peed on each other AGAIN?!?" And I didn't even want to think about what everyone else was thinking, because like every time this happens, every stall was full.

Thankfully, it wasn't the entire bladder's full.  And thankfully, Grant was wearing warm-up pants so it all wiped off pretty easily.

And I had a sudden, earth-shattering realization of how crazy my life actually is when I replied to my daughter across a full public bathroom, "Don't worry, honey, it was just a little bit of pee and it is cleaning up pretty easily.  No big deal, it's not as bad as last time."


2 comments:

Samantha said...

Ha ha ha. I know that I have had my fair share of crazy moments like this. Luckily, no one has peed on anyone in public, but I am not holding my breath. I know at some point it will probably happen. I am sure that whoever ends up with that mother of the year award is secretly insane, because your responses were definitely something along the lines of what I or any other mother would use!

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