Why you should teach your child to wipe their own a$$...

Since my birthday was on Saturday and we were at a wedding, Ian and I went to the grocery store to buy me a cake tonight. Normally, I'd be all fancy and bake a cake from scratch, but I'm tired. So cake from Woodman's it was! It was so cute watching him pick out the cake. He made sure to pick something that was for Mommy. He couldn't decide between the chocolate cake with white frosting and pink flowers or the chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and pink, purple and green sprinkles. We ended up coming home with the chocolate cake.

After we were home, him and Sean went downstairs while I did some work on the computer and Charles rocked Emmett. After a while, Sean came upstairs and sat with us. I kept thinking I was hearing something so I muted the TV a few times. We had the dining room windows open, so it sounded like the little boy down the street playing outside since it was so distant. About 20 minutes after Sean came upstairs, I muted the TV again because I heard this distant sound. I decided to go check on Ian, although he will usually play with his trains downstairs for a long time or he'll get on his computer and go on PBSkids.org. I get to the top of the stairs and realize it's HIM screaming. I hear this tiny, muffled screaming and bolt down the stairs as fast as I can. In my head I'm trying to figure out WHY it's so distant sounding. Then I realize he's in the bathroom with the door closed!

There are few sights as sad as walking into the bathroom to see your child barely holding themselves up on the toilet SOBBING! The first thing he says to me, "I've been crying for HOURS!". If you know Ian, you know he's a tad dramatic. But in reality, poor kid has been sitting on the John for a good 20 minutes waiting for us to wipe his butt! I wiped him, gave him lots of hugs and apologized over and over. Then explained to him that he could have hopped off the toilet and came upstairs! He was so worried about getting wiped correctly that he wouldn't leave the toilet!

We went upstairs and he was telling us about it. I asked him what he was yelling and he said he yelled, "Mommy! Daddy! Sean!" he also said he yelled, "I'm going to miss the cake!". As the story unfolded, it turns out Ian actually told Sean to come upstairs and get one of us. Sean did come upstairs, but he apparently got distracted by something and ended up finding a candle and brought that up to show us, not mentioning anything about his poor brother stranded downstairs!

Lesson learned: Get an intercom system for the downstairs bathroom, or teach Ian to wipe his own ass.

Unrelated, how adorable is this picture of the three boys at the wedding on Saturday?!