Once a month a local antique store has a design open house that I like to visit. The store is open 7 days a week, but once a month they decorate a single family home on the property with new furnishings, holiday decorations and other such sundries. I like to go and get ideas and the kids don't mind because there are always neat things lying around. It is known to them as the "Buffalo House" as the main store used to have a stuffed Buffalo Head (which someone recently purchased!), now replaced with a stuffed Yak head.
I like to go on Friday to avoid the crowds, but I should have known the "holiday" house would draw crowds all three days. So we waited for Charlie to get home from school and by 11:30 we were on the road north.
It was so crowded when we arrived. The design house made me claustrophobic. While all the finely dressed women looked for Christmas decorations, this no showered, 12 year-old northface fleece jacket wear-er surged through the crowds with two little boys. I was on a hunt for some furniture pieces that would round out some empty rooms in our house and this store rarely disapoints.
Dining room buffet, check! Bench for dining room table, check! Upholstered chair for family room, check! A few other little tchotchke's and I am ready to pay.
Thankfully the store set up an outdoor cashier, so I told the boys they could play where I could see them while I waited to pay.
Not two minutes later Jackson comes up to tell me he has to go to the bathroom.
Of course.
The nice woman behind me tells me she will hold my spot. Yay! No port-a-potty within sight, Boo! I rush him behind a barn and ask him if he has to poop, "no", another YAY!
As I get back in line, Charlie comes over to tell me he lost his toy in the pile of leaves near the barn. I tell him I will help him when I am finished which should be any minute now but feels like forever.
Finally, I am next in line. I can see Charlie sitting on the stone bench waiting for me and I can see Jackson's bight yellow coat (with him in it, thank goodness) playing in the pile of leaves. I pay, rush over to find Jackson standing half naked in the pile of leaves announcing to me he has pooped.
This is where I feel like time slowed and as I looked around saw everyone laughing, pointing while I turned bright red. As I pulled up his pants (should I wipe him with leaves?) he kept telling me "I didn't do it in my pants!" as I kept asking "Why didn't you come and get me?"
Besides this incident, I have let him urinate outside several times. Never have I let him defecate, we always find a bathroom for that...until now.
Trying to figure out the correct way to handle this situation, Charlie asks if we can find his toy now. I looked down at the pile of leaves and just laughed. No way was I going to stick my hand in that pile of leaves to find a $.20 toy. As his lip trembled, I told him we would stop at the Dollar store and get a new one, as I don't think he realized his toy was now probably covered in human feces.
Little man is pretty independent. I love that he is willing to get himself a drink or snack, put on his shoes, come looking for me OUTSIDE of the house (YIKES!), he is a go-getter. More often than not, I am caught by surprise at what he can do at age 3. Oh boy, caught by surprise this time is an understatement. When I asked him again why he went right there in the middle of all those people, he told me because that way I could still see him and he wouldn't get in trouble. Love this boy!
But yeah, I am THAT mom who can't control her kid and lets him poop in public.
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Wow. And I thought that I, as a woman without children, had a reason to hate stores without public bathrooms!
ReplyDeleteSusan, that is the BEST story. You totally have to save that in the archive to tell his first girlfriend in high school.