♫ My girl wants to potty all the time...potty all the time...♫

Back in the mother land there was no such thing as disposable diapers, so each time the baby pooped, you would have to wash their pelenki cloth diapers.  This made Russian mothers want to potty train their kid as soon as physically possible.  My mother still brags about me being potty trained by 7 months.  Well folks, we now live in the good ole U.S of A and we are lucky enough to have disposable diapers so our kids can piss and poop all they want and all we have to do is remove, and toss their paper undies.  I didn't realize how great I had it with diapers until Violet became potty trained.  An entire new world opened up to me.  A world where I have to take my toddler to a disgusting public bathroom.  A recent escapade made me really miss the diaper days.

We went to a Birthday party in a Russian restaurant and Violet was running around with a bunch of kids while Gene and I were enjoying our dinner.   Somehow she wandered off and made her way into the women's bathroom.  I am still not sure how this happened since she had to go through like three doors.  Luckily, our friend Andrey saw her go in and came up to us to ask if it was normal for our 2 year old to venture into the bathroom by herself.  Ummm, oops, no! We're not winning any parent of the year awards with this story!  I jetted to the ladies room only to find Violet standing in the handicap stall with the door wide open and her pants around her ankles.   She is too short to reach the toilet so she just stood there bewildered at what to do next.  I picked her up and held her over the toilet as I tried not to lose my balance in my 4 inch heels.   After she was done, I realized that I had to go to the bathroom as well, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone.  My thinking was, "what can possibly happen while I take a leak?"  In that 20 seconds she managed to wipe her hands on the bathroom floor, while peeking in the next stall and saying, "Koo koo (who is there?)".  As soon as I was done, I grabbed her under her arms and carried her to the sink so I can scrub those hands and pretend the last 5 minutes never happened.  With both our hands finally clean, I thought I was in the clear, but the saga continued.  She was drying her hands with a paper napkin and instead of just throwing it into the garbage can, she held it in one hand while the other hand rummaged through the pile of dirty napkins already in the trash.  At this point I could do one of two things, re-wash her hands or say F it and assure myself that the napkins in the garbage are mostly clean anyway.  Like I said, no mother of the year awards here.

Let this be a lesson to all you moms out there.  Actually there are so many lessons here.  One.  Don't be in a rush to potty train. Two.  Watch your kids!  Three.  Leave the bathroom trips for the dads.  Four.  Don't leave the house when the kid is between the ages of 2 and 7.