When I thought about my life as a mom, I had visions of sweet baby snuggles, crazy amount of giggling, with maybe some food-throwing and silly headwear. What I never envisioned is my toddler dousing himself with his own pee at 4:30 in the morning.

Here’s how the pissening went down:

It was the day after the election, and it was my morning to be up with Boychild. As the parents of young children know, the fall time change is cruel. It’s really quite evil. Your lovely kid thinks it’s an hour later than it actually is, leading them to awaken at 4:30 instead of the normal 5:30, which is still pretty Gee Dee early, in my opinion. The time change coupled with a nerve-wracking election left me pretty threadbare and distracted. BC and I usually snuggle a bit before arising for the day, but this morning was a wash. He wasn’t having any snuggles. All he wanted to do was chat. And chat. And chat. And then jump on my head. I was exhausted, but I acquiesced. I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, so I quickly checked the election results, but when I looked up, I was horrified: My dear son was carrying his night potty across the room! I shouted “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” not having full control over my responses at this wee hour of the morning. I didn’t mean to yell, but I did and I scared him. He freaks out and drops the potty, pee spilling out all over his face, jammies, legs, feet. Every part of him got soaked.

Let me explain a bit here: Boychild has a chamber pot. It’s a tiny little potty that he uses when one parent is in the bathroom or when it’s night time. It saves him a trip to the big potty which might be tough to handle for a little guy. He’s like a 16th century lord. On this morning, little potty had seen some action from the night and had some pee in it- not much but enough so that when little potty was dropped with force, the pee flew out of the pot like one of those fountains in Vegas, soaking my little moppet with his own urine. Oh, he screamed. Oh, he cried! It was one of those moments that I didn’t know what to do. Sleep-deprived, shocked and somewhat amused, I stripped off his fouled monster pajamas and led him to the bathroom. He was pretty mad at me for relieving him of his favorite (soaked) pajamas. With the authority of a Czar, my half-naked Boychild insisted that he wash his hands. He then refused to wash his hands. Classic Boychild.

Sigh.

I got him cleaned up. The rest of the day went- no, wait. It didn’t go smoothly. After the incident, BC knocked over a full glass of water which I had to clean up, then he threw cheese all over the floor. Anyhow we survived the day.

Peeing is a tricky thing, I guess. This was the second incident in a week. The first soakening was on an outing to the kids’ museum. Is it kid’s or kids’? Do multiple kids own the museum? Or is it kids museum? I feel like there should be an apostrophe? Anyhow, we love our local kids ‘s s’ museum and we visit when we can. By the way, it’s about a 20 minute drive to the museum, and that may not seem like a long time to you or I, but it’s a long time for a little boy with a teeny bladder. On our most recent visit, we parked and Boychild told me he needed to pee. “Maaaahhhhm! I need to pee! Need to pee, Maahhm!” he yelled as we pulled onto Museum Street. No problem! Luckily, we have a potty in the back of the car! Side question: is it weird to have, like, many potties in your sphere? I mean, we have the bedroom potty, the car potty- is this weird or is this normal?

Anyhoo, Boychild’s pee alarm went off, so I unstrapped him and he went into the back of the car to relieve himself. We’ve got a Subaru Outback, so I ran around to the back and opened the hatch-back door to make sure he could do it himself. “Go, mama! Go! Close the door!” my child fussed. It was pretty cold out, and I thought, “He’s done this a million times. He’ll be fine.” And he would’ve been fine.

But he forgot to lift the top of the potty.

He peed all over the lid, the back of the car, himself, his socks. Some probably even landed on the hood of the dang car. There was pee all over the place. Yet, because I’ve spent most of my adult life in theater, I had a wardrobe change for him.

Except I didn’t.

How long have I been doing this? And I forgot to replace our extra pair of clothes? Ugh. I was so disappointed in myself. Boychild and I had to go all the way back home, get a new pair of clothes, clean up and go back to the museum. 40 minutes after the accident, we made it back to the museum. My dear child was so penitent. He kept saying, “I’m sorry, mama. I won’t do it again.” He was really wrecked, especially because we had to leave. I told him, “Honey, it was an accident. It’s not your fault. It’s okay.” And that was the moment I really understood the concept of grace. Not the ballet kind, but the forgiving kind. The grace of letting someone off the hook. The grace of kindness. The grace of empathy. It was lovely. And I laughed all the way home.