So last night, as we’re getting the kids ready for bed, Ivan starts bouncing off the walls. Literally. He’s tossing and turning on the bed like a whirling dirvish, while I’m trying to get his after-bath diaper on. The diaper tears, and I’m forced to hold him down with one hand while trying to secure the thing with the other. We wrestle on the bed for a minute or two (Jamie really appreciates this just before bed) and then he’s off like a shot, and out of the room. We’re attending to Sophie at this point, and Kiana’s in her room, which is where (I presume) he’s gone.

So I call out, “Kiana, is Ivan with you?”

She responds, “No. He’s in his room.”

I begin going through the mental checklist of what he may be getting into. Nothing too serious, I decide, but he does need to get his teeth brushed (which will require more wrestling) and so I had better retrieve him.

As I walk down the hall, I notice that he is not in his room, but rather in the bathroom. Having apparently decided that all the excitement was done, and being desirous of a soothing sports massage and a dip in the jacuzzi, that’s where he was.

Only we don’t have a jacuzzi.

We do, however, have several toilets. And considering his size, they are the perfect personal Jacuzzi. So there he was, sitting in the toilet bowl, his arms propped up on the seat, everything below the shoulders nestled comfortably within the porcelain. What followed for me was a mixture between disgust, horror, a desire to go find my camera, and an uncontrollable fit of laughter that welled up and overtook everything else. I gaspingly called for Jamie to come and see - I wasn’t going to run off and leave him there to get the camera, but I wasn’t going to pull him out until I had witnesses, either. It was too funny not to share. (Jamie didn’t think so.)

I wonder if when Chesterton argues that “It is always dangerous to have a little boy”, what he really means is that there is an ever present danger that the child will be killed and the parent will be the one doing the killing. I think that’s why God made them so cute, and funny. Because if any other house guest decided to randomly set up shop in your toilet, you’d send them packing.

When it’s your 19-month-old son, you simply relish the story, and save it for that first girlfriend.

Filed under: Family