To Pee or Not to Pee

Our sixty year-old home has two bathrooms but one is in the basement and has been deemed "too scary" for anyone who isn't a rational adult to use. It's true, the spiders do seem to be attracted to that tile floor, and ever since a pipe leaked and we had to tear out a corner of the wall exposing the old pipes (we traditionally wait 2-3 years to repair such messes), it is a little creepy. But as much as I try to convince my kids that it is PERFECTLY FINE they refuse to use. So if the upstairs, more user-friendly bathroom is occupied, our kids dance around, screeching that they've 'gotta go!' and I always say the same thing, "We have two bathrooms!" They choose to wait except in the most dire of 'situations', and sometimes this ends badly, depending on how bad and which # they have to go. (They have also let their friends know how scary the basement bathroom is and now all of them walk around 'holding it' if the upstairs bathroom is occupied.)

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Now we are friends with twelve families who have only girls. (It was thirteen until last April when cutie-pie Lincoln came along) So all you girly-girl families try not to judge me, and if any of your daughters end up dating Wilson in the future, please swear to not bring this up, but I have taken to letting Wilson go to the bathroom in the back yard. Only #1, and only if the upstairs bathroom is in use, but he is out there nonetheless.

It started a couple of weeks ago with the same scenario of Wils dancing all over (he waits until the last minute--I think to get just one... more... Lego... in... place....) and the bathroom door locked. I started to say, "We have two...." and then thought, he's a boy, we have a huge, private backyard with plenty of vegetation...and I told him to go for it. He looked at me like I had just given him a bowl of ice cream for breakfast and shot out the back door. He came back in, proud as a peacock and informed me where, exactly he had gone. (He is wise enough to have picked a bush that is way out of the way).

So now it is routine and to be honest, I don't think limited to times of bathroom overcrowding. I have seen him leave his toys, scamper out to the end of the yard and let it go almost every day. Who am I to complain? No toilet to wipe up, my son is learning outdoor skills and I think it has fostered a sense of independence in my little six year-old boy. And I guess, Jennings, Ross, Haws, Hilburn, Tanner, Wolfe, Tomlinson, Rehman, Bransom, Martinez, Erickson and Deckart families--it's a boy thing!