Wee Problem

Hearing EldestGirl pad to the toilet all by herself this morning, whilst YoungestGirl gurgled in her cot, TheBloke™ and I smiled at each other, curled up under the warm duvet. Parenting is cool.

“MUMMY!” came the not-terribly dulcet tones of EldestGirl. “I did a wee in my knickers. I didn’t get there in time.”

YoungestGirl took this opportunity to stand up in her cot and bash her face on the side of it, howling as if the world were ending.

“Wee or blood?” TheBloke ™ asked me. I took the wee.

She had not done a wee “in her knickers”. She had flooded the entire bathroom. A big yellow puddle sat on top of her IKEA toilet step. Little wee-wee footprints ran from the toilet out towards the landing (and stopped at the beige carpet. I didn’t like to think about that too much).

Three towels and half a bottle of Dettol later, the bathroom floor was clean. It was at this point I noticed four My Little Ponies lined up beautifully on top of the toilet cistern, looking for all the world as if they were about to take part in some sort of lavatorial gymkhana. These fuckers are not easy to stand up. They fall over a lot. This would have taken effort and time.

“EldestGirl?” I asked. “Did you line your ponies up before doing a wee? Even though you really needed a wee?”

“Yes,” said EldestGirl. “Because I couldn’t leave them alone in my bedroom because no-one would be looking after them.”

“Next time,” I said, “could you do a wee before lining your ponies up, please?”

“No,” said EldestGirl. “Baddies might steal them.”

Unwilling to get into a discussion about how burglars are unlikely to bypass our laptops and car keys for a tenner’s worth of Hasbro plastic, I merely reassured that no baddies could get into our house.

In the meantime, TheBloke ™ had brought YoungestGirl into the bedroom with us. There was no blood and she had stopped howling. She beamed up at me beatifically. I bent over to give her a kiss. She bit me on the nose. Hard.

Parenting is not cool. Parenting is stupid.