Bathroom Snobbery

There was a night in the not-too-distant past when Mila laid her head on the pillow at night and fell asleep as a certifiable Bathroom Tourist. There wasn’t a single bathroom in all of Western PA that she hadn’t visited because every three minutes she found an excuse to go on tour.

The next morning, though, she woke up a certifiable Bathroom Snob. I don’t know why she changed her mind about seeing EVERY bathroom; I just know she did. Suddenly, she refused to go into any bathrooms that weren’t at home. Even then she was picky – upstairs was out of the question and she would happily march her little butt downstairs for the superior potty.

She totally and completely stopped being willing to go in public. It was literally an overnight transition and one that happened without any good reason. She didn’t get traumatized by an automatic flusher or anything like that. She just plain changed her mind. She never wants to see another public restroom ever again, thank you very much.

Needless to say, that leads to some interesting situations. Mostly it’s fine because she who wants to hold it can hold it. I’m not going to fight about it, mostly because I’m in awe. I can’t hold it three minutes and there she is with her tiny little bladder waiting an hour. It’s impressive.

But sometimes we're out and she clearly needs to go. When that happens, I do fight with her because of course I do. This past weekend we had a doozy of a fight while visiting the library in Oakland. She swore she didn't need to go, we left, and then while we were visiting Heaven on Earth (aka Wafflelonia) she was all, "I need to go potty!" So, fine. We went back to the library.

She promptly refused to admit she needed to go.

WHATEVER.

So we left again. It was about 4:55 when we walked out the door, which was good because the library closed at 5:00.

GUESS WHAT HAPPENED. GO AHEAD.

At 5:01 on the dot, the Bathroom Snob started whining and demanding to go back to the library. I believe her exact words were, "I WANT TO GO POTTY AT THE LIBRARY!" She managed to scream that phrase at the top of her lungs for an entire hour because the library was closed. Alexis and I tried substituting, but that went over about as well as substituting a salad for ice cream does.

There was a lot of yelling.

And now about half of Pittsburgh has heard a 3-year old screaming about wanting to potty at the library. If you are one of those people, now you know. I'm sure you were confused, so I figured it was worth explaining.