Never Underestimate The Joys Of A Public Bathroom With Two Kids
As an avid caffeine drinker and a mother of two young children, I spend an exorbitant amount of time in the bathroom (mostly trying to shirk my parenting duties).
So I’m sharing some public bathroom tips to at least give you the heads up to not touch me or my children post-pee.
Public Bathrooms, Children Edition
Tip #1: If someone can watch your children while you run into the bathroom, ASK. Unless your children are acting up and you tend to take a long time peeing. Then the person will think you jumped out the window. And will catch you halfway out when they come looking for you.
Tip #2: Ask the people in the bathroom if they’re waiting. They may be fixing their hair. Enjoying the free soap. Singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. AND STILL WAITING FOR A STALL. If you cut in front of them, they will hate you forever. (FOREVER you old biddy.)
Tip #3: If the stall doors do not lock, you cannot use it. I REPEAT. DO NOT USE THE BROKEN STALL. You need one hand for wiping, one hand for wrangling the children, one hand for keeping the door closed. Since you presumably only have TWO hands, you are left giving your fellow bathroom mates a full-frontal.
Tip #4: The baby seat provided will not have a working buckle and will be located as far from the toilet as possible. So let go of your germ phobias and put the baby on the ground. The whole ordeal will go much faster if you put the child down. And if they aren’t mobile, balance them on the baby bag. If they are, sing and coo from your porcelain throne. And hope that the kid doesn’t crawl into the stall next to you because this may shock the woman in the other stall. Enough for her to miss. Then you’ve got more than hands to wash.
Tip #5: Post-bathroom crawl you will have to choose whose hands to wash, yours or your babies. And you have five seconds before your oldest child leaves the bathroom with your stall buddy who peed on your kin. Choose the baby. As the adult, you are slightly less likely to put your hands in your mouth. And you can always tell yourself and the strangers around you that you will use hand sanitizer afterward. But you won’t. You’ll forget while the baby cries because her hands are wet and the other kid says: I have to pee NOW, Mama.
You’re welcome. Although after writing this I thought: WHO NEEDS TIPS ON PUBLIC BATHROOM USE? And then I realized. The answer was me.
This post is written by Alex Iwashyna, a happily married mom with a BA in Political Philosophy and a Medical Degree and the drive to become neither. She blogs at Late Enough mostly about life, parenting, marriage, politics, culture, religion, and her inability to wake up in the morning and not hate everyone. Find her on Twitter or Facebook, too.
