Before I Had Children (Number #2 in a Series)

Before I had children . . .

1. I never went into my bathroom and discovered an entire platoon of Army men waging amphibious battle in my sink (complete with combat vehicles, and he had rigged a sort of crude bridge from one side of the sink to the other).

2. I never was awakened at o-dark-thirty to have the following conversation with a ten year-old (him, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; me, not so much):

Him: "Mom, do you think I should wash my feet?"
Me: "Huh?"
Him: "I mean, I don't want to take an entire shower, since I took a bath last night."
Me: "Are you feet dirty?"
Him: "No, they aren't dirty, not so much - but they do have pee on them."
Me: "Huh?"
Him: "I have pee on my feet."
Me: "Which dog should I kill?"
Him: "No, not dog pee - it's Parker's."
Me: "HUH?"
Him: "Parker peed on the porch, and it got on my feet."
Me [now fully awake, because WHAT THE HECK?]: "Okay, so many questions. Why was Parker peeing on the porch?"
Him: "He thought he saw something scary in the bathroom."
Me: "Alright . . . . Skipping over questions of technique and the need to clarify that porches and peeing only go together OUT IN THE COUNTRY, and then you actually pee OFF of the porch, NOT ON IT, did you just STAND there and let him pee on your feet?"
Him: "No, I walked through it."
Me: "BAREFOOT?"

Here's the entire story: The five year-old convinced himself that there was something haunting the bathroom (the kids' bathroom, not ours, which - as noted above - is protected by an entire infantry division). He went outside to pee and let Max the Escape Artist Cat out the back door in the process. Fortunately, Max has grown quite large and heavy in his late adolescence, and he tends to pull up lame and panting before he clears the carriage house, but you still don't want to let him get too far ahead. So Connor dashed out the door after Max . . . and "discovered" a puddle of his brother's pee with the soles of his bare feet. Most of the pee, one has to hope, got washed off by the dew on the grass, but I scrubbed carpets just to be on the safe side.

And, yes, Connor washed his feet.