Here Comes Summer...

Isaac was the only child potty-trained in this house, not our old one.

So, considering the low-flow and (I want to say 'crappy' but it just seems too obvious) horrible toilets we have here, he spent a lot of time learning to pee outside.

He would just rip off his diaper or his training pants and let it flow out in the back off of our deck.  And considering the fact that one or more of our toilets are clogged at one time or another, it just seemed like the easiest solution at the time.

Oh, what I have created.

Lately he has been getting off the bus, crossing the street, throwing his backpack and jacket over the fence into our backyard, and then walking around the house to go through the gate to get his stuff and then come into the house through the back door.

All of which he finds terribly hilarious since I am usually in the kitchen right where he walks in through the back door and therefore I usually get a terrible little jolt of surprise/terror when he pops unexpectedly through the wrong door.

He doesn't do it every day.

Oh, no no.  He's too diabolical for that...I would then start to expect him to pop in through that door and therefore he wouldn't be able to scare me when it happens.

He keeps his options open.  He's no normal, sweet, six-year-old.

Yesterday he attempted to pull-off this little trick on me. However, a couple of variables were different than the usual day, and so things just got thrown totally off.   So we then got an outcome that was even more unexpected and therefore not good.  Not at all good.

The two older boys, however, were thrilled.

First of all, when he got off the bus, I was in the TV room, not the kitchen, as per usual.  Also, the dogs were in the backyard when he came in through the gate.  They are usually in the house.  Finally, the back door he usually pops through was locked.

So he was bombarded by dogs the minute he went into the yard.  And he saw me sitting there, watching the news, the minute he got onto the deck, so he knew he wasn't going to get to scare me.  And with the door being locked, he couldn't run right into the house and do the thing he normally does when he first gets home.

OK, wait...it looks like I forgot to mention one important thing about his routine.  Isaac has to pee.  Every single day when he finally gets into the house, that's the first thing he does.  Big pee. Like he's been drinking Gatorade all afternoon, holding-it since lunch, and having Calvin step repeatedly on his bladder on the way home on the bus.  Big pee.

So, these changes all led to one thing.  And I hope you see where I'm headed here...

That's right.  I looked out the window from our TV room just in time to see him standing there with his pants and underwear dropped to his feet, peeing off our deck.

Which, OK, its not the best thing in the world, but, like I mentioned, that's how he learned to pee without a diaper, so its not the worst thing in the world, either.  Plus it looked like it was going to rain soon.

But what didn't fit in with this excuse, or anything else I've described here was this:  not only was he half-naked and peeing in full-view off our deck, he also just-so happened to be peeing on the dog.

You heard right:  Isaac peed on the dog.

Can you imagine how many times I heard that sentence yesterday?  I can't believe Isaac peed on the dog.  Do you remember when I peed on the dog?  I can't wait to tell people at school that Isaac peed on the dog.  Its like that time Isaac peed on the dog.

Which all would be funny if it weren't so soon.  Just too soon.

But what's even possibly more reprehensible is the fact that after I saw Isaac pee on the dog, I had a very serious choice to make.  I could immediately grab her and run her up to the bathtub and clean her up (and make Isaac help me, natch).  OR I could wait until this morning when I miraculously had her first-ever grooming appointment scheduled, but which would mean that we would have to keep her overnight knowing that she had been peed on.

Guess which one I picked?

That's right.  During the trip to get to Aqua Dog, I will not only be holding my breath for the three minute drive it takes to get there, but I will also be holding my head down in shame.

And later on today, when he is walking from the bus stop to the front door of our house, Isaac will also, hopefully, be holding his pee.