An Inside Look at the Price Loo

Over the years, I've come to realize that what is perfectly normal to me actually has the potential to make others cringe.

Such as our bathroom...

In our first home, we had just one bathroom. One tiny bathroom. As boys entered our family, the bathroom began to take on some of their personalities. When Jonah was about seven, he was reading Captain Underpants. So one day he decided to make our toilet into Harry Potty. He cut out little arms and facial features and glued them to our toilet. It was cute. I thought it was very creative and ingenious.

There were times that I would take a shower only to discover that all of the shampoo, conditioner, hand soap, shaving cream, and any and all of my lotions had been made into 'mixtures' by Jonah and Gabe.

Then there was the night that I tripped and fell over a lightsaber on the bathroom floor. In the dark. Into my forehead. Any other mother may ask, "Why, pray tell, is there a saber on my bathroom floor?"

Just the other day, my little friend, Benjamin, was perplexed as to the reason that there was a raccoon skull on the floor. I fail to see why this perplexes him...

Toenail collections, scab collections, rock collections, sand collections.

Piles of powder, snow, mud.

And don't even ask my boys what they do while they are...um...in there with the door locked. Many, many times I have entered the potty, post...you know...and have found Star Wars action figures hanging, all within an arm's reach of the toilet. Not only hung, but first bound and tortured by band-aids, then hung by toilet paper. Sometimes they are choked with toothpaste, sometimes they are frozen in carbonite Hans Solo-style, by being embedded in a bar of soap. Dental floss goes quickly in our home, not because of it's hygienic properties, but because it has great zip-line properties. When paired with Batman, it's the greatest adventure of the day.

Often I find an entire roll of shredded toilet paper in the sink, mounded up soggy volcano-style with any assortment of lava inside: toothpaste, antibiotic cream...mud.

A few years ago, this was a conversation I was involved in:
"Melanie, you wouldn't believe the things my kids were doing in the bathroom. It got so bad that I had to close and lock the bathroom door and hide the key."
"Oh, what were they doing?"
(heavy sigh from my cousin), "They were (whisper here) unrolling the toilet paper - the entire roll! You just wait, you'll be locking your door any day now."

I guess that maybe I should have locked the door the day that Jack decided to get a drink by himself. Out of the toilet. The unflushed toilet. But he was so proud of himself...

See, I think that really creative things happen when my children actually have to sit still for a while. And being in the bathroom forces them to be still until nature is finished with them.

And I happened to like the Harry Potty...