Potty Perfect

Anyone who has ever taken a child out beyond the 4 walls of their home knows what a disaster public bathrooms can be.  I'm not even going to 'touch' on the germ factor - too gross to think about.  But just physically navigating the bathroom itself when you have one or multiple young children is a nightmare.  Where do you put them when the disabled bathroom is being utilized and you can't take your stroller in?  There are many options at your disposal, none of them pretty.

A) Prop the narrow stall door open with your stroller.  Works well till someone walks into the bathroom as your haunches are hovering above the nasty toilet seat.

B) Balance your child on your lap while you pee.  Not really that great if you are toilet seat phobic like myself.  I have balanced Charlie on my leg while hovering, great thigh work out, but you usually wind up peeing a bit on the seat if not down the back of your leg.

C)  Leave child outside the stall door while you pee.  It's pretty much guaranteed someone will come in and judge your fitness as a parent here, unfortunately you gotta take the hit and pray they just don't take your kid.

D) Bring the child into the stall and have them sit on the bathroom floor.  This is vile but really the only option if you have 2 kids with you.   Gregory has actually licked the base of the toilet bowl in a public restroom and I'll be darned if that kid hasn't had a cold in 2 years.  There is a case to be made here for good germs.

Given the state of most public bathrooms, any one of these scenarios could force even the heartiest of souls to become homebound.   But before you join AA (Agoraphobics Anonymous), things are looking up.   I recently paid a visit to the 'family restroom' at the local mall.  Check this out.

No your eyes do not deceive you.  That's 1 big potty, 1 small potty, and 1 infant chair complete with restraints, I mean straps.  Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!  I'd like to know who I have to contact to get an initiative on the ballot for 2016 requiring family restrooms like this everywhere there is a large congregation of people - airport, mall, stadium, etc.  I'm considering having another kid just so I can really take advantage of this.  Ha!

Waste Not Want Not

I hate waste. My husband would argue that I enjoy wasting money, so let me be more specific.  I hate wasting food. I'm quite certain this is genetic. One of my fondest childhood memories is of my Dad slamming the freezer door over and over again while yelling, "What the...For the love of...Dammit!  Who opened all of these!?!"  He would frequently find five to six open containers of ice cream in the freezer, most of them with freezer burn that left them inedible, which is probably why we kept opening more.  Duh.

Another favorite was when my Dad yelled at me and my brothers for the uneaten 64 oz economy sized jar of pineapple sauce that had molded in the fridge.  Unfortunately, pineapple sauce never really gained the market share that Dole had hoped for, despite Dad's most valiant efforts.  He was a coupon clipper at heart, no matter what the product (or how gross), he loved to save money.

I definitely get my waste hating from him. And this week I was wishing with all of my being that my Dad could have been here to help hand out a good old fashioned Greek ass whooping on my eldest son.  For the record, a Greek ass whooping does not involve feta cheese or lamb.  Just a lot of yelling, hand gesturing, and red faced exasperation, oh and maybe some spanking if you did something really bad.

Charlie is 7 and one would think capable of brushing his own teeth.  Not quite.  Though the actual brushing is not where we have the problem.  The kid turns into the Jackson Pollock of toothpaste every time he gets around an open tube.  Keep in mind we usually have one strawberry and one watermelon flavor opened at a time, so he is working with greens and reds in his color palette.

While the mess is fairly contained - a few designs on the vanity, maybe a happy face on the mirror, and always a generous coating on the toothbrush from handle to bristle - it's extremely sticky and nasty and hard to clean.  I do have Charlie pick up after himself, which winds up being less about cleaning and more him smearing it around further.

Over and over I utter monotonous phrases like, "Please only use a little bit of toothpaste.  It is very wasteful what you're doing.  Stop making a mess.  Now you have to clean this up.  No, clean it, don't just rub it all around.  CLEAN. IT. UP."  I get tired people, of yelling, cleaning, and listening to myself.  Something needs to change.

Last night Charlie must have thought it was my birthday because it looked like cake frosting exploded in the bathroom.  Green and red toothpaste all over the counter, light pink and green foam on the mirror.  That's right, he decided to spit at the mirror instead of the sink.  The sink was another story all together, the entire basin and faucet, including the hot and cold water knobs, were covered in a thick zig zag pattern.  I was less than pleased.  Charlie was laughing hysterically in his room as he heard me yell, "What the...For the love of...Dammit, Charlie!"

I could feel myself channeling my father's Greek rage.  I wanted to slam some drawers and yell and lecture.  But then I remembered something, we too used to laugh at our Dad during these episodes of his. He got incredibly mad over something as trivial as ice cream.  The madder he got, the funnier it seemed to me and my brothers.  Granted 365 days of toothpaste cleanup is no laughing matter.  I wanted to teach Charlie a lesson, and to date, the yelling thing wasn't working.  Maybe a Greek ass whooping wasn't the answer.

I decided to hit him where it hurt.  I marched into his room and said, "Give me your piggy bank?"
'What?  Why?'
"Give me your piggy bank?" I calmly said.
'Why?'
"You owe me $4 for the toothpaste you just wasted."
'What?'
"The toothpaste.  That's all over the counter.  It's expensive and you just used an entire
container, so give me $4 to pay for the next one."
'Um, okay', shell shocked, he handed me the money and I walked out.
Victory!  I still had to clean up the nasty bathroom, but a victory none the less.

I could feel my Dad smiling down upon me, wondering why he hadn't made me and my brothers pay for all of those uneaten gallons of ice cream.  I'd like to think he'd have let the pineapple sauce slide.
But this was progress people.  We learn from the mistakes of our forefathers and make progress.