Life Lessons

When I became a mother, I anticipated having to teach my young children many life lessons. How to hold a pencil. Be nice. Wash your hands. Look for cars when you cross the street. Say thank you. Don'ttouch my scalding hot flat iron.

But, there are other important life lessons that you might not anticipate having to teach your child, for instance, peeing in the ocean. This one, has got Madelyn stumped good.

This past week at the beach I could see that her run was getting a little bit squatty. A few minutes later she squat-sprints over to me and with panic announces, "PEEPS!" which is Madelyn shorthand for "Hey Mom! I really needed to go pee about 15 minutes ago and now we're both about to be in big trouble."

I took Madelyn aside and explained to her that when we're at the beach, we can just go sit in the waves and go pee-pees. She looked at me like I just told her to color on the walls.

"No, Mom, I want to go in the potty!"

"When we're at the beach we can go pee in the Ocean. And there is no potty at the beach." Which is a lie, because there is a horribly rank smelling porta-potty a couple hundred yards away, but you couldn't pay me to go into it by myself, forget taking a three year old in it.

I volunteered to go with her into the water and even hold her hand, but she stood up straight and told me she no longer needed to go 'peeps.' Sure.

I returned to my Tommy Bahama throne and she ran off.

Not five minutes later I looked up to see Madelyn standing about 10 feet away from any water, peeing onto the sand.

As soon as she finished, she ran back up the beach to share the good news with me. I cheered for her, quickly sent her to the water to rinse off, and felt relieved to have taught Madelyn an important lesson.

But, Madelyn has had two accidents in as many days since our life lesson on the beach.

Which has caused me to reflect. Upon entering motherhood, I didn't anticipate that I would have so many life lessons to learn from my young children. Like, if after drilling into your child that she only go pee-pee on the potty, you emphatically encourage her to pee in her swimsuit, in public, at the beach, there will be consequences.