Boys & their toys

Have boys, they said. 

It'll be fun, they said.

{ok, we didn't get a say in the whole boy:girl ratio, but work with me here}

Boys are awesome. Our boys are awesome. They are loud. They are hilarious. They are adventurous & cute as puppies when they are up to no good. You know that saying 'silence is golden'? Nuh-uh. If the house is quiet it's a telling sign they are up to no good...True. ALL true.

Another truth about boys - they make your toilet smell like an alley behind the local pub. No lie. 

We do toilet checks on the hour every hour - or after each pit stop, to comply with standard OH&S recommendations. A wet toilet floor is a slippery toilet floor, & no one wants to land in someone else's pee. Or even your own pee.

I was aware that the younger (& not so younger) male species may need reminding to refine their aim. I was prepared for drips on the toilet seat & few a strays on the floor. What I was not prepared for was the proverbial showers that would dry in yellow droplets all over the seat & lid. Neither was I expecting to regularly find Lake Bonney on our toilet floor. I kid you not. I had no idea that so much wee could come from such a small person in one trip.

With four boys taking regular jaunts to the lavatory, one of whom has a low capacity, hyperactive bladder meaning he is nearly always busting straight off the mark. Some days I clean the toilet floor more than I load the washing machine.

Over the last four months or so it seemed to exacerbate, likely due to the school holidays & with now four boys using the commode on a rotating door basis. Fed up with having to resort to a towel to clean up the initial mess, going through rolls of toilet paper & bottles of disinfectant on a weekly basis I called all the boys to a toilet door meeting. Mum was serious.

Rule #1
When you go to the toilet, hold your penis! 
Many times I had busted Jack just thrusting his hips forward & then refining his aim as he went. Which was never successful, & often by the time his aim was on target he'd run out steam, so to speak. By then it was too late.

Rule #2
Put the toilet seat UP!
You can't drip wee on the toilet seat if it isn't in your way. {I didn't bother asking them to put it back down once finished. I learnt long ago to pick my battles & right now putting the seat down is very low on the list of parenting warfare.}

Rule #3
Watch where you are weeing.
How do you know if you are meeting water with water when you are staring at the ceiling or looking over your shoulder? 
To reiterate - hold & watch, from beginning to end.

Rule #4
If you make a mess, clean it up. If you need help, ask.


We went back to basics, even though we had covered all of these back at the beginning when they first began running around in jocks. With these rules {verbally back in place} I was hopeful. 
Hopeful my days of soggy socks from stepping in some one's wee were over. Wiping seats, behind lids, walls & floors with disinfectant could be done less than five times a day. Minimum.
For a few days it helped. Lake Bonney never returned & but for a few splashes here & there, it seemed they were taking their responsibilities as boys seriously. Then every now & again I would find a puddle returned, or the beginnings of a yellow shower over a seat that hadn't been lifted. I was able to rule out Ben from the offending list. That still left Jack, Blake & Will. It appeared each of them were guilty, in random order, of breaking one {or all of} the toilet commandments.

Through constant reminding & follow up checks, we're slowly getting to a clean & visitor safe lavatory. Most of the time anyway. If they make a mess they do clean it up - to the best of their ability. The seat & lid now both stay down, so if they need to pee they lift both instead of aiming over the seat. Every boy is holding their hose & watching where they are aiming - a big win.

Seriously, I never imagined getting boys to use & leave the toilet in a clean state would be such an on going drama. We were not lazy with their toilet training or have low standards of personal care & hygiene. It just seems that they are too busy & find the need to vacate their bladder a time consuming interruption to their days. So it was done as quickly & as haphazardly as possible. After all there are soccer balls to kick, bikes to jump & scooters to ride. Who has time to go to the toilet anyways.

In a predominantly XY gene'd large family two toilets are not a luxury.

They are a necessity.

If I could go back I would put duct tape over the mouth of my twenty year old self

Ten years ago this {not so} little guy came along & transformed us from a twenty-something couple into a family of three. 

Before becoming responsible for my own offspring, I was full of ideals, opinions & thoughts on how I would raise our little angels. We hoped there would be more than one to call us Mum & Dad, of course it also went without saying they would be near perfect little angels.

We wouldn't be using a dummy, he would sleep anywhere, any time, with the ability to just nod off whenever the sleepy bug hit. He would eat all his vegetables & I would know how to deal with tantrums, toilet training & night terrors. 

From three months we would use cloth nappies when at home, to save money & make our contribution to saving the environment for the future of the baby {screaming} in my arms. When it came time for solids we would only be serving up home cooked lightly steamed vegetables & fruits. A new food would be introduced only after three days from the last, to ensure if there was any delayed reactions we would know the likely offender.

We would follow the {imagined} parenting handbook to the letter. In the event we couldn't find this handbook we would follow the advice of all those baby & parenting experts that are in every printed publication. At every health center. Stalking new mums in your local supermarket.

Then of course Ben came along & showed me that life wasn't meant to be like the movies or the glossy pages of a parenting magazine. He screamed. He ate baby food from a jar. By six weeks old he was sucking on that dummy harder than three year old with a lolly pop. My sanity depended on that sucker. I only ever used cloth nappies twice. In the same day, before declaring them too hard to deal with after Ben leaked poo all over myself & his legs for the second time in as many hours.  

By the time Rianan came along I had turned my jaded back on those experts & followed what I thought to be right for us. Plus Ben had well & truly broken us in, so while my ears weren't immune to newborn cries, they no longer drove me to a fetal position in the corner. Rianan also had a dummy & her bum never felt anything but disposable convenience.

'If it ain't broke don't fix it' became my motto. So we followed the same footsteps when Jack arrived. He too had a silicone sucker from the ages of ten months to sixteen months, because he wouldn't give up the milk bar. I hoped by introducing a dummy he would realize that the fake nipple I was shoving in his gob every feed time was full of warm milky goodness too.

For every opinion I professed, when my hips were still pre-baby width & I had no clue what I was spouting off, each & every one has been thrown back in my face courtesy of our minions. I am no stranger to humble parenting pie. 

I have done the exact opposite of everything I said before I knew better. Letting them finger paint yogurt on the windows then lick it off, watching the same movie again that has just finished because it stops a tantrum in it tracks, keeping them in night nappies for longer  because I can't be bothered to deal with wet sheets every night & every morning. Using food as a bribe, empty threats to discourage bad behaviour, ten warnings when I said three warnings & you're in time out. Hiding in the bathroom to eat chocolate in peace, because I don't want to share or deal with the tears that will follow when they realize the chocolate has been devoured by the Mum who doesn't share her treats.

To the kicker I have finally given in too...

As a Mama to four toilet occupying boys, I have given up the war of pee on the floor. I accept it is a daily unavoidable occurrence that comes with the male species. As inevitable as not saying no after one row of chocolate. 

I used to say my toilet would always be free of left over drips (& puddles) - both the seat & the floor. I'm not sure if it's because we have four stand-to-pee people (not including Doug, because he can aim just fine) but I have lost count of the number of times I have gone to the second {kids} toilet only to have my sock soaked in urine. Or even worse, get a wet bum.

 G.R.O.S.S.

At least most mornings, before anyone comes over, I remember to do the compulsory commode cleanliness check. In the event I haven't done the required checks & clean ups, I quickly race past, knocking our guest into the walls as I charge past them down the hallway.  

Because it's one thing for my socks to get wet, but something else entirely for someone else's.

If the last ten years I have taught me anything, it's to never presume you know what you're talking about. Especially on anything to do with birth, babies, kids & parenting.

Happy tenth birthday Bendjabum.

Toilet training....again

So we're toilet training, again. That's one thing with having had more than the average child:parent ratio, it seems like you're constantly toilet training.

It was almost a year ago that Blake graduated from nappies, & with Jack, from when he came out of nappies at two & a half years old we've never really stopped (due to his bladder issues, that are still on going). Then there's Ben & Rianan who are only 20 months apart, & with Ben being nearly two & a half when we toilet trained, then Rianan was only 17 months when she was ready to go to big girl undies - it feels like I've been constantly thinking about potties, undies, accidents & packing enough spare clothes to dress a small nation for the last 7 years.

We briefly tried toilet training with Will back in January, during summer, but he just didn't 'get' it & through many little puddles outside, showed us he wasn't ready yet. However over the last month or so, Will has been a lot more aware of what's going on in his nappy - so I've decided it's time to try again. If we have success - awesome! If not, then we'll leave it for another few months & try again. It may seem like a longer process doing it this way, stopping after a few days if there doesn't seem to be much success, then re-starting a few months later. This way works for us though & takes away any stress or anxiety. I don't have the determination to stay home every day for a week, two weeks, three weeks - however long it takes until they are finally accident free. Also, we don't have time, or the weekly routine, to put the rest of our life on hold to get through that method. So instead, I wait until I know that we have two or three consecutive days that are quiet with no plans & we can just chill at home while making toilet runs every twenty minutes.

There's one spanner in all this that doesn't help make it easier for me, & that is breastfeeding. Murphy's law dictates that every time you sit down to feed a ravenously hungry three month old, a toilet training two year old will yell "wee-wee Mummy, quick toilet". Because we're in the early stages, half of these dash-to-the-toilet events will be false alarms. So poor Clay has no idea what's going on, when he gets three minutes into a feed & then suddenly finds himself on his play mat while I dash down the hallway following Will as we attempt to keep his undies dry. Though I should probably be used to it, given that I'm pretty sure I've been toilet training one toddler while we've had a new baby in the house for 90% of our toilet training days.

So far, this morning has been accident free, although that's not including the school run when Will had a nappy on as we took Ben, Rianan & Jack in to school then Blake to kindy. I'm so glad he didn't have undies on at that time, otherwise five minutes after getting home & when I was tied to the couch feeding Clay, there would have been a massive clean up that no one wants to face at 9:15 in the morning & still pre-coffee. 

Fingers crossed the next couple of days go well & we can say good bye to having two in nappies & hello to constantly scanning road sides for somewhere safe & out of view to pull over, in case of immediately required toilet stops. Cleaning car seats when we couldn't pull over in time, & high fives when a wee was kept in until we could pull over.

Then we get to do it all over again in another two years.