Can I have some privacy? PLEASE??

There is a belief that once you become a mother, your life loses all privacy walls and becomes an open book -- or in this case an open door. Let me tell you: it's the honest truth.

Tonight we decided to take advantage of Jamba Juice's 2-for-1 coupon and took the kids out for a little post-dinner outing. When leaving the house with children, certain steps need to be taken before one can actually get on the road. One of the most important steps -- actually, I would venture to say THE MOST IMPORTANT step -- is to convince your child to use the bathroom before leaving the house. Kael has a tendency to hold it until the last minute, until the need is desperately urgent, before he races to the bathroom. Lately however he's been refusing to go at all unless it's on his terms, his timeline (arghh!). Luckily, we have been able to outmaneuver him on many things by saying stuff like "I'M going to use the bathroom first. I'M going to eat dinner first." etc., etc. You get the drift.

Tonight (as usual) he didn't want to go so I went first because, well, I really had to go. So I'm in there, doing my business when the door bursts open and there's Kael, mad and upset because I'm on the toilet first.

"Mom, I want to go pee first!"
Well, I can't get off because the process has already started. What's that saying... the train's already left the station...?

"Honey, let mommy finish and you can go after."
I see Malia peeping under his arm, wanting to see what all the ruckus is about.

"NO mommy! I want to go pee now!"
He's getting pretty steamed because I'm still on the toilet. Crimony kid, there's TWO other bathrooms upstairs!! Malia in the meantime has squeezed herself in so now there's 3 people in the little closet bathroom downstairs.

"Kael, just wait a second, please, I'm almost done. Let me finish and you can go after."
By now he's stomping around, trying to pull me off the toilet. I'm trying to clean up. Malia sees me take some toilet paper and immediately starts madly spinning the roll.

"MOMMY! GET OFF THE TOILET! RIGHT NOW!!!"
For crying out loud... mother... FINE!

"#$%^&*@!!" (All in my head, of course.)
I manage to clean up, hobble my way out of the bathroom, holding my shorts up with one hand so I don't trip, grab Malia with the other and hop-hop-hop my way out. I put Malia down so I can pull up my shorts and she bee-lines back into the bathroom to finish unrolling the toilet paper. I grab her again (there's a good sized pile on the floor by now) and hobble my way to the kitchen sink where I let her go, pull up my shorts and wash my hands.

"MALIA NOOO!!!"
Crap! I run back to the bathroom to see both Kael and Malia peering into the toilet. He's bare assed (he just peed) and I'm thinking "omigod, he peed on her, he peed on her arm, he peed on her head, he peed in her face, she DRANK PEE!" and I'm bracing myself, not knowing what to expect. But Malia is saying "uh-oh, uh-oh" pointing at something in the toilet.

She had just dropped a plastic Easter egg in the toilet and it was floating around, like a little purple polka dotted boat in a light yellow lake.

Thank goodness! The solution was just a simple fishing expedition, not a sanitizing job. Clearly a job for Dad.

Next time, I'm using the upstairs bathroom.