Potty Time: A Family Affair

A friend of  mine told me once that when her daughter’s child began walking, she told her to kiss all semblance of privacy good-bye.  By then, my own child had been walking for a while and I knew for a fact that it was truth she spoke.

When I was a bachelorette, living by myself, I would often go to the bathroom without announcing it at all.  Indeed, had I spoken it aloud to an empty apartment, well that would probably have been a little odd.  And once I moved in with my then boyfriend, now husband, I would still tend to, you know, close the door.  Like, all the way.  We share many things, but one of them is not the bathroom – at least not while one of  us is on the toilet.

Oh yeah. and I used to call it “bathroom” and “toilet”.  Now it’s “making pee pee,” or “poo poo” and always, always it’s “potty”.  

Ah, just one more thing that changes when there are little people tromping around the place.

These days, when I have to pee, I say: “Gus, Mama’s gotta go potty, do you want to come with me?”

The answer is, invariably, yes.

So we trundle into the bathroom (keep in mind our house, and therefore our bathroom, are teeny) and either he strews his bath toys all over the place, or he stands before me saying “mama! pee pee!” and “wipe!”.  Occasionally he’ll have a seat on his little potty chair – fully clothed, mind you.

We let him in because we want to cue him into the fact that going potty is the coolest thing one can do.  We want him to be so impressed with our abilities to sit (or, stand, as the case may be) and eliminate waste into a white porcelain bowl, then flush it away, that he’ll ask – nay, deMAND to do it too.  

And, I’ll admit, it’s also because if I don’t bring him with me I will have to listen to him crying for me outside the bathroom like his little heart is breaking and really, what’s the use in that?  

So together we go. He listens for the tinkle, he says “bye-bye” to mommy’s pee pees and helps me wash my hands.  It’s fine.  It’s motherhood.

But sometimes? I miss making pee pee in private.

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