Wee Map

I've been madly whizzing through the housework hoping I don't forget what I had to blog about among everything else this morning.  I've typed the title of this blog post first so that by the time I tell you the other stuff, I haven't forgotten what I was actually going to blog about.

I've transfigured the bathroom, laundry and kids' loo while Little Rex slept, and in the process I rediscovered some paint palettes I put in the laundry tub to soak the day before yesterday.  This time, there was a little too much paint in the palettes and so instead of dissolving and washing away, it remained hard and lumpy.  When I thought I had finished the cleanup, I was in fact left with this in the bottom of my laundry tub:

It struck me that it looks like a clown has thrown up in my laundry tub.  Pity the poor clown who horked up the paintbrush too.  It must have been one heck of a trick, though.

Then I did a quick check of Little Rex (still sleeping peacefully - what is with this baby?  Last feed at 8:30pm, breakfast milk at 7:00am and only one feed in between?  What was I doing wrong with poor Buzz 7 years ago?) and while I was there I looked in at what Woody was doing.

He had got one of our nativity sets out.  He likes playing with the Joseph, of course.  He calls the Father of Christ "Joey" and calls his crook his "wucky tick," as Woody is a bit partial to carrying lucky sticks around himself.  I was just about to come and blog when I noticed an apocryphal inclusion to the nativity set here - Ka-Chow!

I'm glad I wrote the title first, or I would have forgotten what I was going to tell you.

Toilet Training. It's said that girls get it faster than boys, but what that really means is that the average of girls will be ahead of the average of boys.  In real life though, sometimes you come across boys who say, "Okay, if you say wee goes in the toilet, then I'll put it there," and you'll find girls who think that accidents are a perfect opportunity to laugh and giggle with the poor schmuck whose job it is to clean it up.

I remember when Jessie was quite young how she would stand still while a puddle widened at her feet, laughing uproariously about wee on the floor and how funny it all was.  She didn't see it as an opportunity to berate herself but as an opportunity to have a Jolly Good Laugh.  Ha ha, says Mummy, wiping up the puddle at her feet.  But okay, laugh.  Better than berating herself.

Jessie wasn't all that late to be toilet-trained - I'd say by 3¼ she was finished, and I have a pretty narrow definition of "finished" involving Practically No Accidents Ever - but the accidents still come occasionally.

For the last year and a half, the only accidents she has had have been around dawn, just before she wakes up.  It's pretty rare, but when it happens she usually comes to tell us, and we tell her not to worry and calmly wash the bedding.

This morning was one of those mornings.  I am pretty sure I know why it happened - she has been excitedly counting down the days to her first school swimming lesson and she, for certain, would have been thinking, dreaming, cogitating and looking forward to it even while she slept.  Little wonder that by dawn, she was wetting the bed.

Mr de Elba heard her chattering to herself as she always does early in the morning and went in and sat beside her.  She was lying on her back paddling her arms and kicking her legs to practice her swimming in bed, joyfully babbling about anything and everything associated with her upcoming school swimming lesson.  Mr de Elba chatted happily to her until she said, "Dad, you're sitting in my wee."

And so he was.  She then gleefully showed him the following piece of paper.  In the half-light while waiting for someone else to be up to share her joy at the upcoming swimming lesson, she had drawn an intricate Wee Map.  If you can believe that.  She had detailed her bed with its pillows, covers and bedposts, she drew herself, and then outlined the wet patch.  It was a fantastic map, one which would have been good to show her father before he sat.

Mr de Elba stood up, sighed, stripped the bed and put the bedding, her clothes and his own pants in the wash, then showered them both.