A Potty Story

Here's a quick story instead of a full blog post. Maybe next week...

After church is crazy time. All the primary kids are running around the room, I am trying to clean up from sharing time, teachers are asking me questions, parents are getting reminders, etc. etc. etc. Usually either Matt or I will pick Bennett up from Nursery and then let him join the chaos that is the Primary room until all the kids get picked up and we are ready to go.

So yesterday was such a time. I was simultaneously trying to pull teachers aside, while answering a million questions, and monitoring boredom-driven children who could almost taste the freedom of the outside world. Right in the middle of all of this, Bennett came up to me and said, "Mommy, I have to go potty, please." Now, when Bennett says these words, it means we usually have about a three minute window to find that kid a toilet or a bush. Unfortunately, I was going to be pre-occupied for the next three minutes, so I told him to go find Daddy. I had seen Matt poke his head in from the hall earlier after he had picked up Bennett, and I knew he was probably in or near the Primary room waiting for me. So Bennett left to go find Daddy.

A few minutes passed, and I was almost done with my meeting in the corner, when all of a sudden I heard yelling. Not angry yelling, or scary yelling...it was the desperate yelling of a child in distress. "MOMMY!! I NEED HELP!!!" When I turned around I saw our little boy, with his pants and underwear around his ankles and his little bare bum exposed to the world. Needless to say, I totally forgot about Primary stuff. I quickly scooped him up (ignoring the hoards of adult laughter surrounding us) and rushed him to the bathroom across the hall, where he had waddled from.

When we got there, Bennett told me in the most pathetic voice how he had tried to go potty all by himself but the toilet was too big. I actually figured most of this story out before he even told me, since there was a trail of pee-pee from the door of the stall to the toilet, and the entire front of Bennett's pants were wet. He kept saying, "I so sorry, Mommy! I try so hard!" Poor guy. Apparently Matt had had some of his own church business to take care of after he dropped Bennett off, and he had left the Primary room. Which is why Bennett figured since both his parents were to busy to help him, he would just have to take care of things himself. We felt horrible that we hadn't been there to help him, but in a weird way we were pretty proud of his determination, too. He really does try so hard to do the right thing...even if it means I have to borrow equipment from the janitor's closet and spend the rest of the week listening to people tell me how cute Bennett's bum is.

What a good boy.