Bathrooms

What is it about children and bathrooms? Do they glow to child-vision? Play beautiful symphonies? I just can’t figure out why it draws them in. Actually, yes I can: it’s the water.

We keep our bathroom door closed in general, due to dogs and cats and small children, but now that Ember is hustling around it has to stay shut ALL the time. The girl is obsessed. If it was just throwing toys into the bathtub I could deal, but she now tries splashing in the toilet water. Yuck. She is fast, too; the second that door cracks open she’s bee-lining for the door and scooting in. Some days I feel like I waste half my day pulling her out of the bathroom and shutting the door. (How does it always end up open? Are there ghosts in this house? Perhaps ghosts named Kate and Natalie?)

Kate is past playing in the toilet or unraveling toilet paper (though I caught her a few times carefully tearing square after square of TP off the roll and throwing them into the toilet), but she loves the sink. She has a step-stool we keep in there (because clearly it’s not crowded enough in my very small bathroom) so she can reach, which is very handy, but she loves washing her hands and drinking water from the faucet. I admit sometimes I let her do it – errr, pretend I don’t see her – just to occupy her for a few minutes, but after a while there is water puddles all over my bathroom and she has soaped and rinsed her hands twelve times so enough, get out of my bathroom.

The real problem is the combination of the two of them. Kate is figuring out how to open the bathroom door – it’s a little sticky, so more difficult than others in the house, and now that she’s potty trained if there’s one room I want her to be able to get into it’s the room with the toilet. But, being three, she is slow as molasses. She’ll open the door and then stand in the doorway, hanging off the door handle.

“Mama, look!”
“Yes?”
“I did it! I opened the door!”
“Yes you did, now go potty!”
“Mama! Look mama!”
“I saw! Now go potty! Close the door!”
“Hahaha. Look mama…” (this is when her attention span wanders and she starts playing with the bathroom scale or cupboard door)
“Kate, GO POTTY. Close the door!”

Then time runs out, Ember reaches the door and shoves it open to dash inside. Kate’s now saying, “No Ember, no!” and then shrieking for me to come get Ember because she’s touching the toilet. Well, right, that’s why I wanted you to close the door to keep her out of the bathroom, since she does this every damn time.

Even worse is when I want to use the bathroom, say to brush my hair. Kate opens the door and comes running in to “help” me and “do it too”, which from what I can tell generally involves banging the step-stool into my legs and shoving me away from the sink. I trip over Ember, who is dashing for the toilet, and often I don’t grab her until her hand is in the toilet water, so I get to wash her hands off. I escort Ember to the hallway, where she starts sobbing, and turn around to the door being shut in my face. I open it (carefully, bonked noggins happen) and start convincing Kate to please wait in the hallway, as Ember does another beeline for the toilet – this time I catch her before she gets past me. By the time I’m done both kids are wet, whine-crying and my hair is still not brushed.

I suppose I need to purchase a toilet lock.