Out of Practice and Happy About It

This past week I had a moment that took me back the good old days. By the good old days, I mean when I first started this blog.

At that point, I couldn't go anywhere without someone telling me, "Wow, you're hands are full!" I had two small children and one on the way. Yes, my hands were full both figuratively and literally.

Of course, being at that stage in motherhood gave me plenty of blog fodder. Tons of it really. And yes, most it seemed to involve messes. I thought I was pretty much past those days. Enter Wednesday night.

We were leaving church and one of my kiddos had to use the bathroom. Of course, this child didn't realize this need until we were in the van. Normally I'd tell my kids they'd have to wait, but this time my kiddo had that certain look. I knew that if I forced my child to wait until after our 20 minute drive home, it would not end well.

Fortunately, Tony was with me so he stayed with the two children while I took the one inside to use the bathroom. I thought we'd be in and out. Instead, it was nearly 30 minutes before we came back to the car.

In the meantime, I had a child who went into the stall and couldn't get the toilet paper roll to work and then couldn't unlock the door. I had to make the child crawl back in the stall and figure out how to unlock it. In the process, the child who couldn't get the toilet paper to work had to do without toilet paper.

Going without toilet paper made a mess. This meant that I walked out with underw*ar in my hand and I had to reassure my kiddo it was okay to do without and just toss on pants until we got home. (I know. Aren't you so glad I'm sharing this?) Of course, the child again got locked in the stall and I finally realized it wasn't because my child didn't know how to operate the lock. Rather, my kiddo didn't know to pull on the door instead of push. I just stood there dumbfounded at how complicated a quick trip to the bathroom had become.

Once we were finally on our way home again, I couldn't help but laugh. That kind of event used to be our experience nearly every time my children had to use a public bathroom. In fact, that was probably mild compared to other outings we've had. I probably wouldn't have even found that blog worthy two years ago. Clearly, I'm out of practice. And in this case, I don't care if practice makes perfect, I'm content being out of practice with these types of incidents!

Hopefully it will be quite some time before I have another bathroom mishap to tell, but just to be safe, I'm going to sweetly ask my husband to take the kids to the bathroom the next time we're out in public!