Accident

Bug has been potty trained for nearly a year now. It has been a wonderful, marvelous year that could probably make me sing. It definitely took time, but once he was ready, he transitioned from diapers to underwear very quickly and very well. Ok, he actually went from being "naked-butt" all day to underwear, but I was totally fine with that!

But, last week, he had an accident.

I'm pretty sure that our move has broken something in these little kids of mine. They don't seem to be happy very often anymore. And I mostly feel a desperate need to be able to keep them from crying for at least 3 hours, with low success. It's very discouraging at the best of times, and downright unbearable at the worst. (Like this morning, when I crawled out of bed at 4am for a shower, just to get away from an inconsolable Gizmo for 10 minutes.)

Anyway, Bug had been being goofy and defiant, as he so often is, playing around in the living room. I reminded him several times that he should probably go use the potty. He didn't listen to me.

Eventually, he ran past me in the kitchen, into the little half bathroom. Then I heard liquid hitting the floor, and an exclamation from Bug, "Uh-oh! Oh, no!"

I ran into the bathroom, to see Bug standing there, shorts still all the way up, right in front of the toilet. Peeing. And peeing. And peeing. And still, he just stood there, like there was nothing he could do. I told him to pull his pants down and pee in the toilet. (Probably not in the nicest way, considering most of my patience wore out last week, probably a day or two before the accident, and hasn't been replenished yet.)

He did pull down his shorts and peed a microscopic amount of urine into the toilet bowl. Of course, it's amazing that there was anything left. I'm pretty sure the kid had to have been full of pee up to his eyeballs. I can't imagine how such a large amount of pee fit inside such a little guy!

I helped him strip off his soiled clothes, and I gave him a wad of paper towels to help clean up the mess. Then I realized that there was way more mess than a wad of paper towels could handle, so I sent him away for a bath, and I tackled the ocean on the bathroom floor. After mopping and wiping and soaking and spraying, our little bathroom was (mostly) clean again.

Most people say that you should wait to potty train until you have time to do it without any interference from major life changes, so you don't have to worry about the trainee regressing. I'm beginning to think that it really doesn't matter. Because apparently, even supposedly well potty trained little boys will have accidents after a major life change.