This evening, during his typical witching hour, Miles took a break from his hyperactive tear around the house and said, “I need to go potty.” It was an impressively lucid moment at a time of day when even the suggestion that Miles go to the bathroom is usually met with an emphatic, and loud, refusal.
While he was on the potty, Miles got out of his pants and underwear. The next second, he was on his feet and racing out the door, leaving me sitting there holding his garments.
As I chased after him, trying to convince him to put some underwear on, Jaclyn sighed, “Don’t worry about it. He’s got to take a bath anyway.”
This started a back-and-forth about exactly when he was going to take a bath and who was going to be taking care of it (“Because, if you’re expecting me to do it,” I said, “it isn’t happening until Jeopardy! is over. And he needs to put on some pants.”).
As we talked, I suddenly realized that I had lost track of where Miles had gone. “Miles?” I called. “Where did you go?”
“I in here!” he called, his voice coming again from the bathroom. I ducked my head around the corner and very nearly had a cardiac episode when I saw that Miles had lifted the basin, currently filled with pee, out of his potty. His left arm was curled around it, while his right arm was holding up the “big boy” toilet seat. Ever so precariously, Miles was attempting to do what he’s watched us do all year long — dump his pee into the toilet and flush it.
“OH MY GOD,” I gasped, leaping to the bathroom. Miles, undeterred by my panic, proceeded to dump the pee directly into the toilet without spilling a single drop of it, then lowered the lid again.
“I DID it!” he declared proudly.
In the odd mixture of anxiety and pride I felt in the next moment, I started cracking up. “Yes you did!”
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 