If You Hear a Strong Tinkling, It’s Time to Get Out of Bed

I love the sounds of early morning. The birds chirping by the ravine behind our yard. Little footsteps running into the hallway. The scraping of the footstool on the bathroom floor. The distinct ping of a strong jet of liquid hitting a pool of unrelenting water... Uh oh.

“MARCUS! You do NOT stand on the stool when you are peeing! I DO NOT want pee all over the floor!!!”

My boy has a foot thing. A keep-my-feet-clean-at-all-costs kind of thing. A won’t-stand-on-the-bathroom-floor-if-I-deem-it-unclean kind of thing. This has caused him to have to be somewhat creative during his morning pees. He’s fine the rest of the day because he’s wearing socks, but early in the morning, Marcus has to find a way to pee without his feet touching the floor. The floor is NOT dirty, by the way—this pregnancy has caused me to be a decent housekeeper, and I’ve been keeping up with this stuff. So anyways, from the bathmat, he manages to reach way out and grab Skyler’s potty seat off of the toilet and tosses it into the sink. This is a big stretch though, and by this point he’s already panting. Then he looks around for something to stand on. Sometimes it’s the stool. Sometimes he pulls the good towel off of the rack. I won’t be surprised if I one day walk in to him perched precariously on the edge of the toilet seat, peni.s in hand, trying to pee slowly enough to not get backsplash on his ankles. I threw an extra period in that word just in case somebody was googling something very different than I am writing about.

The irony is that the stool probably has way more pee-residue on it than the floor ever could. At least once every couple of weeks Skyler will get herself up there, get her pants almost down, and just plain run out of time. “MOMMYmommymommynooooooo! PEEING mommynopeeingpantsmommy!!!” For a very little Skyler-Bean, she sure holds a LOT of pee. But I clean it up, and I Mr Clean the floor, and everything is good as new, so why won’t Marcus stand on the floor?!

It’s fine, he’s somewhat able to cope with the bathroom situation, and when he pees all over the floor, I make him clean it up. I still clean up after him, but I think it’s important for a guy to learn young not to leave a trail of pee on the bathroom floor. I’m also working on getting him to put the seat down. His future wife will be forever beholden to me.

The pool presents an entire new set of challenges to a young man that will never let his feet touch wet. All the way up to the pool he’s excited and raring to go, running ahead, foot tapping impatiently, “C’mon Mommy, let’s GO!” He pushes the button to go into the change room and then the uncertainty begins. Once he has those socks and shoes off, it’s a desperate situation. He searches for a “clean” tile to stand on, then crowds all ten toes together and wobbles precariously on his tiny, dry island. At this point I usually scoop him up and carry him out to the pool deck because I just can’t stand to see this blatant suffering. He’s fine once he reaches the pool deck, but it’s the slippery trail of slimy square tiles in the changerooms that he just can’t tolerate.

Somebody get that kid some crocs.