Not-so-Cool Runnings

When you have to pee, do you run around in circles screaming, “I have to go potty! I have to go potty!” frantically? Yeah, me neither. Harper does though. Every time. Lucky for her, she inherited my bladder, which, as anyone who knows me can tell you, means she does a lot of peeing and a lot of running in circles.

 

Here’s how it goes. She gets the urge to pee. It comes on quick. She jumps up from wherever she might be and proclaims in a frantic tone, “I have to go potty!” Then, the running commences. Our house is 70 years old and, as such, closet space is non-existent. Given my husband’s hoarding tendencies and my penchant towards becoming overwhelmed at the slightest amount of clutter (we’re a match made in heaven, can’t you see?), we’ve had to improvise where storage is concerned. As such, our linen “closet” is actually a hallway that connects the bedroom hallway to the kitchen. The interior wall of the living room backs up to this hallway and serves as Harper’s I’ve-got-to-go-potty running route. She runs at a dead sprint with a stiff back over and over again, her frantic proclamations getting quicker as her feet move faster. She doesn’t ask for help. She just keeps running. It’s bizarre.

 There are two reasons that the running stops.

1. She pees in her pants.
2. Someone escorts her to the bathroom.

 Obviously, we prefer option B but I’m not big on escorting anyone to the bathroom, especially someone who goes as frequently as myself. The toilet and me, we’re intimately acquainted and I see no reason to spend any more time with it than I already do. Plus, I tend to draw a hard line when it comes to issues like this. I view escorting my child to the bathroom every time she has to go as a form of coddling. And I’m not a fan of coddling. Suffice it to say I’ve cleaned up my fair share of pee puddles lately.

 While my ultimate goal is to end this insanity, I have found myself wondering if Harper might be onto something. Every day I am faced with the image of the muscular legs of a woman as she pounds the pavement and the words, “Run a 5K” on my 2012 dream board. Despite my mediocre efforts, it hasn’t happened yet. I wonder, if I did a few laps every time I had to pee (once an hour at minimum), how much closer to that goal would I be?

 

 

 

Comments

[Tired Mama]

My oldest did this. The way we solved it was to give her something to focus on when she had to go - we put a bell on the toilet. Then she had something to run to do. It sounds strange but once she had a place to run and something to focus on (hitting/ringing the bell), she stopped running in circles and ran instead to the potty...