The Potty Project: Part IX "PlayPlace Freak Out"

Mission: Potty Training
Target: Cooper Poston
Status: Finalizing...

Today we made an impromptu trip to Daddy's work to hang out with him over his lunch break.  He works a split shift so he has a two hour lunch from 10:30am-12:30pm.  Usually he does his crazy hard P90X workout during that time, then showers and gets re-dressed for work. Well today he forgot his gym shorts, so I thought, "Hey. What the heck. We'll just head up there."  So we picked him up and decided to take the kids to McDonald's.  I love it because it's fast and relatively cheap.  Luckily the one closest to the airport has a play place, so we really got to make the most of Daddy's lunch break and the kids got to play a little.

So Josh and I were just sitting next to the playplace watching the kids, when Josh said he had to use the bathroom then was going to run out to the car to grab his cell phone.  Okay, fine.  No biggy.  Well immediately after he leaves Cooper comes running up to me and says, "Mommy! I have to go pee pee!"  Normally he asks to go pee pee with a relatively good amount of time to spare, but because he'd been playing and was distracted he had waited until the VERY last minute and was doing the "potty dance".  I could tell by his behavior that this was an "emergency". 

Now normally I'm pretty calm, cool, and collected, but I start to freak out just a little because A) the only restroom I saw was on the complete other end of the restaurant, B) I don't have a change of clothes for Cooper if he doesn't make it, and C) I can't just leave Brodie and Chloe in the play area by themselves and Chloe's little monkey butt is all the way at the tippy top of the jungle gym.  So I scoop up Brodie and start hollaring for Chloe to get out of there. Cooper has me by my other hand and starts to take off, pulling me with him.  I'm thinking, "Oh great.  We're not gonna make it." I turned to see where he was dragging me, and it turned out my little smarty pants 3 year old had spotted a bathroom RIGHT there in the play area, which I conveniently missed due to my state of panic LOL. Thank goodness it was right there because we were absolutely NOT going to make it.  Chloe hadn't even budged LOL

So I ran to open the door for him and he made it to the potty with only seconds to spare.  Another, "close one" LOL  I just stood there in the doorway with the door open, so I could watch him and the other two kids at the same time.  Hopefully this "open door policy" wasn't offensive to anyone, but hey, a mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do. LOL Then of course Josh finally walked back in, Cooper finished up, and all the kids got to resume play.

It's just funny because I really take my wonderful hubby for granted sometimes.  The majority of the time we go out as a family and I don't usually take all three kids somewhere by myself, so I'm used to having the help and I don't always realize just what a huge help my hubby really is even if it just means keeping an eye on the other kids while I run to the bathroom, so once again I have to give props to my Joshy for being a wonderful father and true family man. I truly am a very lucky woman. <3

Anyway, my little "freak out" was quite humorous especially for those bi-standers who got to observe me running around like a chicken with my head cut off with a baby on my hip, a toddler holding my hand, and screaming up the side of the play area for my other little one to "Come down now please! Bubba has to pee!"  It all turned out okay in the end and we left McDonald's accident free, well sort of, because as soon as we went to leave Cooper went to open the PlayPlace "exit" door, which appeared to be an exit, but really wasn't and we set off the McDonald's alarm system.  O_O   Yikes! LOL  Always an adventure, always.   That's what I love about my amazing little family.  Never a dull moment :)

Anyway, that's it for this potty update.  Thanks for checking in everyone!