My boy wants to potty all the time...dd..pp

I can't read the hub's post today without flashing back to this moment. Back before we "knew" I struggled with Eric running out of the church and into the parking lot like a madman with no awareness of what was around him....like moving vehicles. Luckily it was usually during pickup with I would go get Ryan and other moms would slow down his progress enough that I could catch up to him. One particular day it felt like moms were holding the doors open for him. Grrr. Anyhoo, I think I dropped everything - maybe even Ryan too because I'm not sure where he was when all this happened. Perhaps I left him with a parent. (Poor guy - the 2nd borns have a tough life) Anyhoo, I got him right before he ran out in front of a minivan, who was probably only going 1 mile an hour looking for a parking space, but I tried to transfer my fear into him by telling him it was going fast and almost ran him over. When I had jerked him out of the street he had fallen on the pavement and had gotten his hands grossed up. This was before the "I have to touch/lick everything" phase, a time when he hated to be wet or dirty. As I was ranting on how he almost got killed, he's screaming, "My hands! My hands! My hands!" meanwhile never acknowledging the situation. I was livid but didn't know what to do (remember this was before AS was ever a twinkle in our eyes). We happened to be in a handicap parking space as we had this little scene and I made him sit down, really just so I could take a couple of deep breaths. He looks on the ground at the symbol painted in the parking space and says, "Look, Mommy, a Potty!"

Well I thought I would just die laughing if I hadn't been so mad at him. I gathered our stuff (including Ryan) and we went home.

My initial thought of his comment was that the person is sitting down and maybe he looked like he was sitting on a potty. After some thought, I realized that most public restrooms have the sign beside the "Men" or the "Women" signs on the outside of the room or on th door of the "big" stall. So perhaps he thought the space was a potty. Well reading Terry's second part of his post might shed some light:

The Big Blue Potty

Also on our excursion yesterday, I had to go to Kohls to redeem a coupon that we didn’t use at checkout. It ended up being in our favor, but it took a few iterations to get the prices worked out correctly. As The Elder and I were walking through the parking lot, he stopped on the painted handicap symbol on the parking lot, a big blue (3 ft x 3ft) square with the universal picture of a person in a wheelchair.

The Elder is in the middle of the sign, looks down at the symbol, puts his hands on his waist and asks, “Daddy, can I go to the bathroom here?”

“Wha? No. No. No.” I rapidly replied, finally figuring out exactly what he was doing. He hasn’t quite figured out the whole public urination concept yet. The other day, he had his pants moving down his waist as he was going toward a tree in the church parking lot during our annual Trunk or Treat event.

He is a riot.

On a different note, he had his school pictures today and we had to pay an extra $6 for phtot retouching because he had a small scratch 2 weeks ago on his forehead and it had turned into a dime size wound recovering from mild infection and constant scab picking. We've been putting bandaids on his forehead which is funny considering he used to HATE anything sticking to his skin - bandaids, stickers, temporary tattoos, post it notes, etc. But these are COOL bandaids - they have Hot Wheels on them!! He went back and forth on whether to get the Hot Wheels or the Nascar ones. It was a tough pick but these had a better box - reuseable as opposed to the recyclable carboard box. But now it is healing since he can't pick at it. He actually gets mad when you take it off. He literally cries like you've held him to a fire or branded him on the rear.

I was afraid that they wouldn't think to take it off for the picture, but hub put a spare in his "communication folder" in his backpack so I think they put two and two together. Plus I had told Eric that teacher would take it off for the picture and put a new one on. So even though both parents forgot to send a note, quickly say at drop off, or call in to remind them to take it off, I had confidence that Eric would have kept them in line.

He came home asleep on the bus (so cute, esp since the other little boy was sleeping too) and went straight to the playroom and popped in the Cars DVD (again). THis time what made it funny was that he made me stay and watch because "such and such" was about to happen. Already having full length movies committed to memory.

"Want to see him turn blue? Watch..."

"The car turns over and 9-5 bounce over the wheels. Watch..."

"There...see? Mens and Womens." (The cars were going to the bathroom at the track)

I'll let the potty theme to come full circle and leave it at that!