Things I learned this week

This carnival has been eye opening for me.  I love to read what others have learned, but it also makes me feel a bit dense.  Sometimes I can’t come up with anything I have learned.  Most of the time what I can come up with is completely trivial.  I’m afraid my brain is rotting. 

Nonetheless, I won’t pretend to be deeper than I really am, so here’s what I’ve learned this week.

1) Always insist that your children use the potty just one more time before you leave the house.  Don’t let them tell you they just did.  If you didn’t see it happen, it doesn’t count.

2) Always keep a potty seat in the car.  You never know when you’ll be out somewhere with no potty nearby and a child who did not heed your instructions to use the potty before you left the house.  You don’t want to be scrambling around trying to find an empty takeout cup stuffed underneath a car seat.  Trust me.

3) Always leave the house 15 minutes early, in case you get 2 miles down the road and you have to turn around and go back to get a forgotten sippy cup.  Or lovey.  Or for someone to use the potty.

4) Be sure to keep a change of clothes in the car, including shoes, for all of your children.  The fact that they have been potty trained for 4 years means nothing.  Sometimes you just get so into what you’re doing that you forget to go to the potty.  Or so I’ve been told.  While cleaning pee out of a certain someone’s shoes.

5) And finally, do a bottom check before you leave the house.  Especially if there are skirts involved.  Because showing up to a very large, crowded event and being told 20 minutes into the program that someone forgot to put on underpants is really not a great feeling.

If you’d like to read what others have learned this week (and no promises here, but possibly some are more profound than mine), then please hop over to Musings of a Housewife to read the rest of the entries this week.