Benjamin Tales

Benjamin's been doing great on the potty training home front—he's been staying dry at night and taking himself potty during the day. It's been wonderful!

Last night, however, he had a few slip ups, which I guess is understandable since he wasn't feeling well. He and Miriam got their flu shots yesterday (and, boy, were they ever upset that Rachel got to have the flu mist, which was out of stock yesterday) so he was a little feverish (he almost got to participate in a study on the rate of febrile incidents in three-year-old flu vaccination patients but they couldn't find the head nurse so he didn't...but just so you know, he gets a low-grade fever). 

It's always hard to remember you're potty trained when you're not feeling great.

Zoë stayed up fussing until around 2:15 AM. I'd just put her to bed and crawled into bed, myself, when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet down the hallway and back again. I thought about staying in bed and pretending to be asleep, hoping that whoever had gotten up would do the same, but in the end decided to check on whoever it was. 

I rolled out of bed and made my way to the kids' rooms. I looked into Benjamin's room and noticed that his bed was empty, but I couldn't see him anywhere (it was darkish and I didn't have my glasses on). 

"Benjamin?" I called out. "Where are you?"

"I'm here," came his little voice from under the play table in his room.

"What are you doing under there?" I asked. "Do you need to go potty?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, let's go!" I said, rushing him to the bathroom. I tugged on his pants and noticed they were already wet. "Uh-oh. Did you wet your pants already?"

"Oops," he said.

"That's okay. Did you wet them in the bed or after you got up?"

"Asty."

"Okay, where'd you pee then?"

"Under tabey."

"Under the table?!" I exclaimed. "What? Why? How? How is that easier than using the toilet?"

"Bassoom's too gark," he shrugged.

It's not too dark; there is a nightlight in there, after all, but I think that was the first time he'd gotten up to go potty by himself when the house was all dark and that's got to be pretty intimidating. I wasn't too upset because the fact that his body is waking him up to go pee in the middle of the night is progress, even if he's not quite making it to the toilet. And he didn't wet the bed, which meant that even though I had to mop up pee from under the table (wood floors made that job quite easy) I didn't have to change his sheets. 

Except that then he woke up wet this morning anyway (after I took him potty at midnight, and again at 2 am, you'd think he'd be able to stay dry, especially since it's been a couple weeks since his last wetting-the-bed episode (and because who goes pee three times in one night? Not usually him!)...but apparently not).

I would never tell him this (because I don't want to encourage the act of peeing in strange places) but I found his crawling under a table to wet his pants pretty humorous.

On a completely unrelated note, here's Benjamin reciting his own version of I Like Trucks (by Philemon Sturges and Shari Halpern):