I Should Have Thought That Through a Little Beforehand

Micah has a personal goal to be up BEFORE the sun. Sleep is for the weak, and he will never be accused of being the weak link in this family. (I'd love to hold that title, but my title of Mom does not allow weakness in any form. We really are expected to be superheroes.) But as fate would have it, Micah slept in one day last week. I had to wake him for the bus. That was a pain that was almost physical.

If you know anything about parenting, you know to let sleeping toddlers lie. The whole adage about sleeping dogs has nothing on a sleeping toddler. I waited until the very last second to get him up. I gathered his school clothes ahead of time so as to interact with Mr. Grumpypants as little as possible. My goal was to get him dressed and out the door before he was fully awake. One cannot risk the Screaming Thrashing Toddler Syndrome that early in the morning.

I sat him on the couch and gave him an underwear choice. Bad move; let the grumping begin. Those, he chose. NOT THOSE, WUMMAN, ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL MY NETHERS? Yes, those. NOPE, CHANGED MY MIND AGAIN. KEEP UP HERE, WOULD YA? There is no winning with a toddler. There were only 2 choices. I'm not entirely dim witted.

I took his overnight diaper off and discovered it to be dry. (Four weeks in underpants and now a dry overnight diaper. People, the world as we know it is coming to an end. I'm grateful. Huggies will be sorry to have lost our 15 year patronage.) Since our downstairs bath is being renovated and the toilet is sitting outside, I figured the best thing to do would be to have Micah relieve himself outside as well. There is nothing like peeing off the back steps to bring a smile to a boy's face. It's amazing how the day took a turn for the better after that. The giggling, the hugs, the games we played between the two of us as he got dressed. And then he was off to school.

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We were sitting in the living room when Micah walked over to the front door, unlocked it, and stepped outside. Being as we never use the front door unless we have company, I was baffled. Did he hear someone knock? Was he checking the status of the neighbors? Was he looking for UFOs?

It wasn't until he did this a second time that day that we realized what was going on. Mama taught the boy that it was acceptable to pee outside. Front porch facing the road, back door where nobody can see, it's all the same when you're a little boy. And the front door is his door of choice. He prefers to flash the neighbors and attempt to cause accidents from innocent passersby.

We have GOT to get that downstairs toilet put back in.