Do you know why there are all these fountains of little boys peeing? Because that’s all those freakin’ cherubs want to do: pee where they’re not supposed to.

Four times. 4x’s. Four times is how many times my darling child peed on the floor this week. Post bath, Boychild brushes his teeth in the buff, then we have naked baby time. Naked baby time is awesome. The baby is announced with great fanfare, usually something like, “Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the most naked baby in the house!!” Then there’s usually applause and Boychild runs around proud and naked ‘til it’s time for p.j.s and a diaper. When dad is in charge of bath time, naked baby time is replaced by “spaceship”, where Boychild is wrapped in a towel-sling and then flown around the house. It’s arguably the most adorable time of the evening.

But recently, someone *cough* Boychild *cough* doesn’t wait to get a diaper on before he lets fly with some pee-pee. Husband found out the hard way that you should not carry a peeing child while he is peeing. You see, the child won’t stop peeing once he’s picked up. Oh no. The little creature keeps peeing as he’s being carried from room to room, leaving a trail of urine as he goes. When he peed on my watch, I just boop!, moved him from the sink over to the tub so he could pee in there. He pees in the tub all the time, so no big deal. Our whole house smelled like pee for like, a day. Maybe it still does and I’m nose-blind. No idea. If you come over to my house, please tell me if it smells like baby pee. No, don’t. Let me embrace the illusion of a pee-free smellin’ house.

Side note- I had a guest in my car recently and told her that the chances of there being an old diaper in my car were pretty high. Maybe like, 80%? She, bless her, told me that she didn’t smell anything. But then she told me that there was a dead bird in her car for a week and she didn’t smell anything. She might be the perfect car guest for anyone with a toddler.

So our child has turned into a garden hose. A gleeful garden hose. He loves tinkling wherever he pleases. We shoulda named him I.P. Freely. *rimshot* The awful irony of this is that early on, he loved peeing in the potty. He’s pooped in the potty, too. He was good at it. He has two potties: one shaped like a throne (get it?) and one that looks like a regular toilet, complete with flushing sounds. We got the books, we had a party. Then one day he decided that he never wanted to use the potty ever, ever again, so when we place his tiny butt on his miniature loo, he screams like we’re skinnin’ him alive. No joke. This is a great example of early successes not leading to later mastery. I ask him, “do you want to want to use the potty?” He replies “no.” And I say “why not?” (“why” questions are always dumb things to ask kids, but I do it anyway because I cannot help myself).  He says, “Because I don’t want to go on the potty.” Case closed. Any further interrogation leads nowhere. So I don’t know why he doesn’t want to use one of the potties. Worst case scenario, he becomes a public urinator.   

The French have been fighting this very thing for years. People (let’s be honest, they’re all dudes) just pee wherever they please on French streets, leading to the smell of pee everywhere. Not that that’s unusual for a big city. I’ve been to New York. I’ve smelled the hot urine wind. But because they are French, have a very classy term for what both their country and our house has been dealing with: les pipi sauvages or “wild peeing.” One thing they tried to curb the wild pissers was installing urinals in flower boxes. I don’t think that’d work in our house, though I did try to convince him to use the catbox and he was momentarily excited by the prospect, but then he found his lost golf ball and forgot all about it.  So, like the French, I will just enjoy some wine and bread and try to combat les pipi sauvages the best way I know how: flower boxes. 🙂 No, I think I’ll just have to bribe him.