Eau de Toillette Boy

Perhaps you’ve heard it said, “Get your mind out of the gutter.”  Well, with our little Judah (a.k.a, J-Man), it’s more often said, “Get your head out of the TOILET!”  And we mean it in the most literal sense of the saying.

For reasons that escape my logical and germ-a-phobic mind, my three year old adores our bathroom and ALL things that pertain to it: sinks, water, tubs, soaps, lotions, toothpaste (as a paint, not as a mouth cleanser) and (drum-roll please)……..TOILETS!

When we say this boy prefers only “eau de toilette water” to do his hair, we are not trying to be haute or couture or anything else remotely French and fru-fru.  We mean he enjoys dunking his head in the toilet to style his fro-hawk…much to our dismay.

Just yesterday, he attempted to sneak upstairs and make a break for the bathroom.  But I busted him just in time.

“Where do you think you’re going, mister?”  I asked, hands on hips in the classic (and well known by the J-man) “Mama’s gotcha this time you little rebel” stance.

“Um…”  He backed up the stairs slowly, still intent on his mission to meet with his long-lost friend Mr. John.  “Just going potty.”

“Really, J-man? Potty?  Are you telling the truth?”

“Yes, Mommy.  I have to go pee-pee.”  Sigh.  Well, I had a handful of three other rebels without a cause so didn’t have time to micro-manage pee-pee episodes.

“Fine, go.  But ONLY go potty then come downstairs, pronto.”  I instructed him with much sternness.

“Yes, Mommy.”  Then, of course, all was forgotten until I went up (won’t say how much time elapsed so you will still think I’m a superbly responsible mom) and checked on him.  

To my great surprise, he was snuggled in our bed with the covers wrapped around him.

“Oh, are you taking a nap already?”  I asked and when he sat up to answer, I saw his hair was soaked to the bone (or more accurately,skull) with tuffets of hair spiked out in random directions.  That’s odd, I thought, well...unless your name is Judah and then whatever is odd is usually a normal occurrence.

“Why is your hair wet?”  I didn’t really want to know, I guess this was more a rhetorical question.

“I fixed it nice, do you like it?”  Did J-man just pull the old parenting trick of avoidance of answering a question with a question?  

“I do…but did you use the water in the sink?”  I ask this and in my heart, hope soars.

“No Mommy,”  Hope deflates as I anticipate the answer now, “the potty water.  I just stuck my head in it.  Sorry your pillows are all wet now.”

Before I began a lecture on the real purpose of toilet water, I paused to try REALLY hard to see life from a thinking-out-of-the-box-three-year-old point of view.  Maybe he thought something like this, “No use filling the sink up with water when there is already a big bowl of water right here!  I’ll fix my hair really nice all by myself and make Mommy so proud of me!”  Now if he did the head-dunk before or after he went pee-pee, I didn’t want to know.  I did know my sheets (especially the pillowcases) would be getting a little laundry bath with a splash (or gallon) or bleach thrown in it.

I took a breath, canned the “momma aint happy so aint nobody happy right now” tirade and sat down to chat about germs and other life lessons with my J-man.  While we talked (and he listened with a studious, sweet face and bored, wandering eyes) I had to hold back a smile as I thought about how boring and CLEAN life would be without these special and precious kids that think outside the box.

Sometimes we get so busy trying to fit these unique kids INSIDE the box, we miss the chance to enjoy the many wonderful and creative uses of eau de toilette water.