please get your hands out of the toilet

you may have noticed that my whole "31 days of blogging" campaign has disappeared. I've still been writing for my own sake but not everyday and somethings just really not worthy of anyone reading. besides, ten days in a row of your inbox getting a message from marvelous light? that was nine days too many.

but i'm back, to share a laugh or two with you. yesterday, our nightmare of an afternoon class was going semi-okay, with some students able to play in our imagination station, some at other centers, having a pretty good time and using gross motor skills and all of that. well, then sweet caroline (name changed to protect the tiny) comes up to me. (background: she's super cute, very articulate, and developmentally ahead of a an average three year old. and she can't say the "n" in robinson.)

ms robison, ms robison, i have to go the baffroom!! she was dancing in front of me. okay, caroline, i told her, let's hurry and open the door. (we have a small bathroom in the back of our room, every class does, and in a class of nineteen three year olds the bathroom is rarely empty. more on that later.)

sometimes the door to our bathroom sticks, so i went to help her. "i can't get my bottoms off!!" she said as she hopped around in her hot pink slip-on keds, visibly trying not to go. "Okay, caroline, we'll get it together."

I bend down and mess with the buttons on her skort. Then I figure out the buttons are pretend. I move to the side zipper. It is sooooo stuck. She's dancing around, I gotta go I gotta go, I'm pulling at the zipper, thinking we should just rip the thing, and then... splat. Liquid hits the floor. Caroline's face as she looked up at me and peed on the bathroom floor was horrifying - she was so sad and upset that she couldn't hold it any longer. Even I wanted to cry. I smiled, kind of laughed, and tugged the skirt down. She sat on the potty and continued to go while I laughed, standing in the puddle. "Caroline, I'm not laughing at you, and I'm so sorry we couldn't get your skirt off fast enough. Its just kind of funny. But these accidents happen all the time and we'll get you cleaned up!" So I leave the bathroom, cracking up, and poke my head around the corner to tell my partner teacher why I'm missing in action. I get Kara's extra clothes and tell her we need to go to the nurses office. She's still so sad.

"Miss Robison, Miss Robison, I need help. My shoes are stuck." Oh, right, your shoes are soaked in urine. Right. So I start to pull them off as she leans on me and ... I dump the shoe out over the toilet. Correct. There was so much liquid in the shoe that I had to dump it. It was as if our ship was sinking and we had to bail out water.

I wondered, as I knelt there in the bathroom with my three year old friend emptying the pee out of her shoes, is my ship sinking? What in the world kind of life am I leading??

So to update you on the little dude who peed in my pants for me (see previous posting) - he's making progress. Doesn't cry as much. Hasn't peed in his pants in three days. But his ears? They don't seem to work. The kid does not listen to save his life. I'm embarrassed to say that two teachers is not enough in a classroom full of nineteen students, at least nine of whom are native Spanish speakers... and that we can't see everything or be everywhere at one time.

So yesterday, we're getting ready to go home, and my friend Vincent (name changed to protect the tiny) came up to me. "Teacher, teacher...long spanish sentence." Vincent, you know I don't speak much es spanol. How can I help you? Show me...

Vincent pulls me very quickly to el bano. "Vincent, you can go potty by yourself, is that what you need? You need help with your - " I stopped. I had opened the door to our bathroom and seen what is was that concerned Vincent so much.

Our friend was in the toilet, up to his elbows, shirt and hair damp, face wet... he was splashing in the toilet as if it was a baby pool. I'm not sure I even said anything for a full ten seconds, but stood with my mouth open and eyes wide in shock. Then I laughed. Then I became furious. Then I found myself saying...

"Excuse me. That is not a good choice. This is not okay. Please, right now, get your hands OUT of the toilet. Out of the toilet!!!!!"

Can I interest anyone in some hand sanitizer??? Kills 99% of germs, so they say.