Pee Pride

In the afternoon today I let Gabe wear a pair of his precious Thomas the Train underwear. As usual, there was a soggy ending to the story. Bedtime rolled around. Gabe was standing on his stepping stool washing his hands in the kitchen, when I told him it was time to go to the potty and pee. But the power of suggestion was too strong: Gabe wet himself right there on the stool. He apologetically announced, "I'm peeing."

But fantastic progress had already been made. After an hour of wearing the undies, I realized it was high time for Gabe to have a pee break. But Kaylee was starting her fussy-wiggles, so I had to high-tail it to the nursery for a visit to her potty box. It turned out she was more interested in nursing than in immediately peeing, so I was stuck there in the rocking chair while Gabe wandered freely, a pee-bomb waiting to happen.

"Gabe," I said, "it's time to use the potty. Come take off your shorts."

Well, heck, he listened to me. I heard him fumbling in the bathroom, and then into the nursery he stumbles, beaming, to demonstrate that he has his undies own around his ankles. "Okay," I said, "now go sit on the potty."

More bathroom fumbling ensues. There are suspicious thumps. "I'm all wet," he says. But not with pee. It turns out he has attempted to sit on the grown-up potty, has somehow dipped the back of his shirt in it. How, exactly, he managed to extract himself from the toilet is anybody's guess. I stripped him of his wet shirt, while still juggling a nursing baby whose bare butt is jammed into a tupperware box. "Try the little potty," I said.

Voila! "I did it!" Gabe proclaimed. And voila! Kaylee peed too. Only I was so distracted by Gabe's antics that the potty box isn't positioned correctly, and I got baptized.

Gabe got himself back into his undies and shorts with only minimal assistance, and had I been a little sooner with my reminder, he might have made it dry to bedtime as well. But as if he didn't want to leave the day on a soggy note, he surprised me again. Kaylee needed one last visit to the potty box during the bedtime rituals. Gabe was happily diapered, but he took one look at Kaylee's bare bum, and asked if he could go pee on the potty, too, and gets himself naked and on the potty and did his business in a flash.

And this time, I caught Kaylee's pee in the box.