Ah, the things we take for granted in our early adult lives, right? I mean, sleeping until we want to on the weekends… Showering any time… hell – twice a day some days! Eating when we are actually hungry, peeing when we have to pee…. This is what I mean when I had dreamier visions. I thought, somehow, my super-organized, extremely creative problem-solving, and neat-freak self would find that motherhood was just another thing to sort of incorporate into my daily calendar… Not so! I knew it wasn’t rainbows and butterflies. I knew there would be many challenges. I just never thought I’d have to wait days to shower in the beginning… or decide whether I could fall back to sleep at night when on vacation in order to avoid waking up the babies when nature - SCREAMED - my name.
The little things in life, huh? I know some people who wish they could have stayed home with their kids. But they too have visions of sugar plums bouncing around in their dreamy little heads. Visions of beach-bumming and dog-walking… and jogging behind the stroller. That’s an accurate vision I suppose, if you’re June Cleaver. Reality however, is not as pretty. It’s still colorful, but applied more like sloppy finger-paints than fancy brush-strokes.
So now, here I am in the middle of the woods in a camper with the fam, a seemingly long walk between our bed and the porta-potty in our camper’s bathroom. And there lie 2 sleeping babies in between the bed and the toilet. After waking them up one morning far too early – just as the sun was poking it’s tired eyes above lake-level – we decided to employ what we lovingly refer to as “the jug”. It’s a device specifically designed to catch human piss – when in a not-so-convenient locale’. They even have a “female adapter” for said device. Of course, we had to own one. Now we’re especially glad we do.
Here lies the sequence of my bathroom woes as a sufferer of “tiny bladder syndrome”, as it has been affected by life’s natural progression:
~ Grew up in a home with one bathroom on the main level – bedrooms upstairs…
~ Moved into a duplex unit where bed and bath were on one level, though at opposite corners of the divide.
~ Moved temporarily into an apartment where the bathroom was oh so conveniently located just around the corner from my bedroom.
~ During these years, I’ve peed in the outhouses up north, and decided that there were fewer spiders in the woods.
~ Progressed to peeing in the woods around our campsites!
~ At night, mosquitoes located blood vessels that only my husband should know exist, so we ‘upgraded’ to the tent-friendly “JUG”.
~ We’ve since moved into our home outside of Mpls, and have 2 bathrooms! One happens to be just a few feet from our bedroom!!!
~ We have also moved from tenting to camper-ing (I know this is not a word) – and we have running water and a flushing toilet!
~ Ah – but babies… so now – we regress again – to using our tent-friendly JUG in our camper bedroom when we need to wee in the wee-hours.
No one tells you that having kids disrupts the natural progression of life! No one warns you that you will soon revert back into patterns of behavior that you thought were long behind you.
But, I have to say, that peeing in the bedroom, into our beloved ‘jug’, is still worth those morning hugs and good-night kisses every day! Precious, amazing, smart, disruptive little people… I freakin’ love you!
TIP! Use those handy cleaning wipes for in-between-cleaning bathroom clean-ups. My favorite: Method Brand Non-toxic, earth friendly wipes - various scents.
A QUOTE: "Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment." ~Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey 'A Woman of Independent Means'
WHIDFML: Peed without hesitation - in a toilet :) And, ate chocolate!
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