During a March break that was wonderfully warm and sunny, we fixed and painted our front porch. This was a whole family affair: Hubby and my dad did all of the fixing stuff, I helped paint, and Tasha and Charlotte entertained us.
It was a particularly idyllic moment when Hubby and I, who were on the front porch finishing the first coat of paint, heard Charlotte singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” at the top of her lungs from somewhere off to the side of the porch. (If you’ve ever heard a 3-year old yodel that tune, you’ll know just how cute that was.)
A car drove past our home and slowed down, the couple in it smiling broadly at us all. I waved and smiled back, thinking that they, too, were appreciating the look of a freshly fixed and painted porch.
It was then that I caught sight of Charlotte, also waving at the car’s occupants. She, still singing, had her pants down around her ankles.
When the car finally left, she waddled over to me. “Mommy,” she announced in a voice loud enough for the town to hear, “I peed my pants!”
Once we had her safely whisked inside, we learned that she had, to her credit, tried to get inside to the washroom. We parents had foiled this by locking all of the doors in the hopes of managing some of the traffic and mud inside. She had cleverly determined that the next best spot was the yard, but that proved trickier than she had imagined.
I imagine there’s a couple out there somewhere who is going to think twice about driving past our home in the future …
