Puddles

Let me start with a little background information ...

My little monkey girl has been known to occasionally wet the bed. She has been potty trained for going on 8 months now and, though she is a certified potty-star during the day, sometimes her love of juice catches up with her at night. A few months ago I was discussing this with a colleague of mine at work who has children of similar ages to mine and she had had the same experience with her second child (backing up a few years, I have to say that from the time my little dude started using a potty there was no turning back, so we never had the extra loads of laundry with him).

The advice that my friend gave me at the time was not to give anyone under four feet tall fluids after dinner. At first, even to me, it seemed an absurdly long time to go without fluids, and to monkey girl it seemed like the purest form of cruelty a parent could inflict upon a child. But as time went on we noticed that it REALLY worked. This new way of thinking about drinking became a new practice at our house for the most part however on the odd occasion an extra beverage sneaks its way into the hands of the monkey girl and we are reminded why we implemented the rule in the first place.

Now that you know the history, here is the reason that this post is called puddles ...

The other night monkey girl slipped into bed with my hubby and I at some point between 11:00 when we went to bed and 6:15 when we woke up. So in the morning when my hubby, who is not all that fond of sharing the bed with our little bed-hogging, kicks-people-in-her-sleep monkey girl, awoke to find himself in a puddle of urine, he was not impressed (to say the least).

The reaction ...

Now my hubby and I are different on many levels, and we learned this past week our reaction to being unwillingly drenched in bodily fluids is yet another difference that we have to learn to navigate in our marriage. With that said, the aftermath of the puddle incident went something like this: I jumped up, cleaned monkey girl and stripped the bed - all while trying very hard to keep to my strict workday timeline so that I could get out of the house by 7:40. Meanwhile my better half was taking his time in the shower (which was a little longer that morning) to really build up some emotion about being peed on.

By the time the shower turned off I had moved on from the pee and was onto my morning time mental check-list: sheets and duvet in the giant washing machine (aside: get a front loader if you can, it will save your sanity ... and possibly your marriage) - check, breakfast for the kids on the table - check, lunches made - check, dog outside for a pee - check. And then there was my hubby: "GRRRRRR" followed by "You cannot pee the bed, seriously monkey girl we will have to put you back in pull-ups if you continue with this behaviour - is that what you want!?!"

The reaction to the reaction:

It was at that moment that I stopped my morning routine and said something to the effect of, "It wasn't her fault ... calm down" - truth be told it may have been my fault as there was obviously an extra bevvie ingested at some point the night before, and I was home alone with the kids.

The result of my mid-rant comment was that my hubby left for work angry at being peed on and doubly angry at me for not supporting his anger at being peed on. Yikes!

The lesson ...

There was nothing left to be said after the door closed, quite loudly, so I carried on and got the kids out the door and off to childcare. I mulled the situation over on my way in to work on the bus that morning and came to the following conclusion: we were both justified in our opinions (mine being: nothing is going to change that she peed, so let's just not juice her up at bedtime in the future, and his being: being peed on is gross)

However, I should have seen his side a little more clearly and saved the rationalizing for once the pee smell was aired out of our room.

Supermom commentary ...

As parents we seem to be built with a protective instinct when it comes to our kids. So when someone else, even if that someone is our partner, criticizes our lovely offspring we automatically go on the defensive.

I would be willing to bet that this very instinct is the cause of at least 80% of the disagreements that my hubby and I have had since we have had children. We accuse each other of not being supportive or showing a united front in reactive situations like this one. When one of us is mad the other always seems to be acting as an advocate for the little people (except when the little dude thought it was funny to spit at people and got a time out at daycare ... there was no little person advocate in that case - it was just plain wrong!!! But that is a post for another time).

We seem to be on the same page when it comes to the big issues, it is just the piddly little incidents like this one that send us over the edge. The funny thing is that by the time I was done advocating and my hubby was done venting, monkey girl didn't even remember wetting the bed and our little dude was just wondering why everyone woke up in a bad mood on a sunny day.

Conclusion ...

So, I will continue to work on to being a little more supportive and a little less defensive in these situations and I, all these crazy parenting follies aside, I will tell my hubby more often that he is a wonderful dad and that we are in this together ... I may even down the road admit that it is okay to get mad when you get peed on.