So, can we just be real for a moment here. Parenting is hard. I know we hear this all our lives, but we don't really "get" it until we become parents. I have a sneaking suspicion that with each new stage my kids enter into I will learn just how much I didn't "get" it. I remember asking when it got easier once... and being told that it doesn't, it just gets different. How true that was. But it's not just the things you think are going to be hard, like teaching manners and how the brush teeth. Some days it's just trying to make it to bedtime. So here's a sneak peek into what parenting looked like today.
Today I let my three year old walk through the ferry terminal in gumboots filled with pee up to her ankles. Yep, that's right. Urine. Up to her ANKLES... Why, you might ask. Because she has recently decided she is terrified of auto-flush toilets. I don't know if you've ever been on the BC Ferries, but ALL their toilets are auto-flush. So that means that the first twenty minutes on the ferry were spent in the bathroom, with my daughter wailing at the top of her lungs, that it was too "woud" and she was "scared". Yes. I was the, ever so calm, mom in the stall demanding that my three year old just pee already and get it over with. In the end I lost. She didn't pee. The rest of the ferry ride was spent in the cafeteria trying to get my children to eat their supper. It was a mostly successful endeavor. However, during dinner I didn't pay much attention to the fact that my three year old was guzzling water like she'd spent the majority of her life in the desert. THAT little tidbit escaped me entirely. So fast forward to the announcement that tells us we're nearing the terminal and I suddenly remembered I hadn't bought my tickets for the return ferry over. So I quickly pack up the kids and we head down to the gift shop. That's always a fun experience, three kids, seven and under, in a crowded store with grossly overpriced items all within hands reach.
So, we leave the gift shop with our tickets and go get in line to leave the ferry. If you've ever been on a ferry you know how crowded it gets by the exits. So, of course, we're right by the door and now there are people pressing in on all sides (my favorite place to be of course). The kids are getting hyper... the docking process is taking WAY longer than it normally does. After a few moments I enact the quiet game (which, incidentally my children LOVE). I get a few approving glances from the people around me and I have a moment of, "I'm such an awesome parent, look at these well behaved kids I've raised! Everyone is so impressed. Yeah, I'll bet their kids don't play this game that well." .. okay, maybe that's not exactly what I thought, but I definitely was having an up moment. Suddenly my three year old breaks the quiet game with, "Momma, I gotta go pee". Now, bear in mind, this is the child who can say she has to pee and then forget about it and not pee for several hours, so a few minutes will NOT kill her. We are pinned in on all sides and there is no way I am losing this prime real estate by the doors so she can go tinkle five drops in a toilet she's going to wail on the whole time. So, like I have a hundred times before, I tell her, "We don't have a bathroom here, you'll have to wait." I get some dubious stares from the people around me and I get slightly annoyed. I know my child people! I know she is capable of holding it! It's FIVE minutes at most! I inwardly roll my eyes at the judgmental attitudes I'm imagining and just focus on the other two children still stalwartly holding their ground in the "quiet game". I'm just explaining to the kids my new rule about the quiet game means no touching and there is a "losing bubble" surrounding them, me, and the people around us, so if you touch anyone you're out. (They were trying to push one another over because nobody was going to lose this game, we've got stubborn and stubborn and they will NOT lose to one another with grace). As I'm patting myself on the back for another parenting win I hear, "oh no Momma!" and I look down just in time to see my daughter's gumboots filling up with liquid. My stomach drops as I watch a tiny puddle form by her boots, thankfully the majority was IN her boots, but now I have a problem. I look around for a staff member to tell about the puddle, but there is nobody but the people who heard me tell my three year old to hold her bladder. For the record, they ALL saw the puddle. I look towards the bathrooms, but there is simply no way that I can get there and back before this door opens, so I do the only thing I can. I stand there, with my daughter's gumboots full of pee up to her ankles, and wait for the door to open. I wonder, briefly, about walking up the ramp. Will the urine slosh back and dribble out the back of her boots? I hope not and hold my breath as we start walking toward the ramp. I hear the audible, "splish, splash" inside her gumboots as we walk. I pretend nothing is wrong. My daughter says, in her loudest voice, "I wet Momma!" I nod and say, with as much composure as I can muster under the circumstances, "I know, keep walking." I feel a slight pang of guilt about the puddle I left on the ferry, but there really was nothing I could do about that and in reality she caught nine tenths of it in her gumboots.
So we walk down the ramp, of course this is the ferry that takes us to the LONGER ramp, so it's a pretty good hike with a lot of ramps. I watch to make sure nothing is splashing out of my daughter's boots and hurry everyone along to the escalator. Normally I'd take the stairs, as they're quicker, but the thought of stairs with gumboots full of liquid.. Yeah, I'm not interested in getting rained on today. We make it to the top with little incident and I'm beginning to believe I'll actually make it back onto the ferry with no further incident. I hug my son and then realize I am, once again, wrong. My daughter's have decided that the ferry terminal is the perfect place to wrestle and I watch in horror as my three year old falls down and the previously contained urine is now spilling all over the floor, her pants... pretty much everywhere. Naturally, I am now the only one who truly knows all that pee came from inside her gumboots. I am also the only one who knows WHEN she peed herself. So, like any sane person would do, I act as though this has just happened, scoop her up and hustle her back to the ferry. This time I didn't even think about the puddle until I was on the ramp. I felt a slight pang of guilt, but my mortification level was so high it was short lived.
Once back on the ferry I take the girls to the bathroom and take off my daughter's boots. It's only then that I realize I don't have a change of clothes. I hadn't packed the girls' pajamas like I normally do, so I have a bag that contains my laptop, makeup, hair gel, a comb, containers from dinner earlier and a Save On Foods bag. None of these items are helpful for a daughter who is soaked from the waist down in urine. By this point my daughter is standing in yet another puddle as her socks have started releasing the copious amounts of golden liquid they'd earlier sponged up from her boots. I pour the boots out in the toilet and then fill them with water and try to dry them with a paper towel. That was disastrous and had I not needed them to get my daughter back to the car I probably would have thrown them in the garbage like I did the sopping wet socks. Alas, my dainty daughter weighs as much as I do, so carrying her all the way through long term parking is not something I'm going to do with a bag that weighs as much as my, relatively useless, bag does.
I put my daughter's boots back on, sans socks, and head down the the gift shop - again. I'm dreading what I'll find there because it's not a place I make a habit of buying things at. Something about eleven dollar magazines just doesn't work for my budget. The ONLY item in my daughter's size is a pair of thirty dollar pajamas. I grit my teeth and take them up to the counter. I pretend I don't know what my daughter is saying when she tells the lady at the counter, with much enthusiasm, that she is wet. Gratefully she was looking at me for a translation so I just said something along the lines of, "sometimes it's just not English" and quickly left before she could repeat herself. As we made our way back to the bathroom, my daughter's gumboots now conspicuously squeaky, I feel as though everyone is staring at me. They know. They know that I let my daughter pee herself and then splish, splash through the terminal in two inches of urine. They know that her wet feet are in wet boots with no socks on. They know I'm about to try to clean her off with paper towel and horrible smelling hand soap that foams.
Fast forwarding to the end of this mortifying tale, there was one useful item in my bag. The Save On Foods bag nicely held the remainder of my daughter's soaked clothes. Incidentally, whoever invented skinny jeans for someone still small enough to pee themselves was a sadist. I do not love having to grip anything that's been soaked in urine so tightly that it starts to drip down my arms.. alas, that was my fate and my reaction must have been hilarious because my daughter's took great pleasure in that moment.
The rest of the ferry ride went without incident. I drove home with no further mishaps and then spent thirty minutes just sitting in my driveway contemplating taking my girls into the house. This is just one of many stories I have filed away from my seven and a half years of parenting. I can only imagine what my future holds. I'm sure there are many fun-filled adventures in our future, but there seem to be more moments like these than not at times. So as I reflect on how my day as a parent went I'm not sure what to take away from today. I think I will end today with the knowledge that it can always be worse. You could be the one up to your ankles in urine instead of just the mortified mother. However, tomorrow is another day and as bad as today was every day is different. Some days are awesome, others are not. Some days are a mix of awesome and not... but do you know what my daughter said to me when we got ready to get off the ferry for the second time? "You're my favorite Mommy, Momma. I like you a lot." And that, right there, that made tonight worth it.
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