It was during two very late night/early morning family trips to the bathroom recently that I learned the following important life lessons:

1. We all need to cut the liquids out a little earlier in the evening.
2. Our next place needs to have at least 2 bathrooms.
3. My youngest monkey is probably going to turn out with a case of OCD.
4. All my effort to instill the “family sticks together no matter what” principal is working.

It was roughly 3:30am on a Thursday night/Friday morning when I heard the sounds of monkey feet shuffling about. I flew out of bed and checked the pantry first. Yeah, I now not the first logical place. Last time I heard a middle of the night monkey adventure, I caught the youngest monkey in the pantry eating beef jerky. “It makes a good midnight snack” ya know.

Then I hear the familiar sound of monkey tinkle, followed by “I’ve gotta go too!!” I plod down the hall realizing I need to go too. So, I queue up as the littlest one is done. She barely gets her toilet paper in the toilet and the eldest is ploppin’ her tushy down. While she begins to commence with the task at hand, the little one begins to twitch and look beyond irritated. Just as I am about to ask her what’s up, she belts out “You can’t do that!! You can’t pee pee on my pee pee!!” By now I really need to go and my sleepy noggin is trying to process the freakage starting to occur. Instinctually, eldest wipes, tosses paper, I sit to pee. That is when the complete meltdown began… First was the loud scream “NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!” Then the crying began. Lastly, through sobs- “You can’t pee pee on her pee pee on my pee pee. It’s just wrong!!!!” Eldest monkey and I both froze, just staring at the meltdown. I’m thinking of the best way to handle this and figure the best place to do so is not while on the potty. I get up, complete my mission and am going to flush when the lil one yells (again) “NOOOOO!!! I will flush it!!” She marches up to the handle, gazes down into the bowl, says “I’m so sorry pee pee” as though she is bidding fairwell to a dceased pet goldfish and then proceeds to flush the toilet. After she was satisfied it all went down properly, the wee one marches up to me, sticks her finger out at me in a pointing manner and declares “YOU should know better.” And back to bed she went.

Eldest monkey and I shake our heads and back to bed we go. As she enters their bedroom, I hear her mutter “Dude, it’s just pee.” Then I hear “It’s just wrong!” So yeah, we flush inbetween now and I am bracing from some serious future OCD.

Roughly two weeks later, around the same time, I awake to realize that both monkeys have climbed in bed with me and the tiny one has hopped down on the way to another middle of the night bathroom venture. At the same moment I realize I am wet, eldest yells “Mommy- she peed on me!!” Mom mode kicks in, I’m wide awake now. I ask her to stop yelling, tell I’ll get her cleaned up, but we don’t want to make her sister feel bad. Off the bed I hop to go deal with the little one when she realizes she’s had an accident and begins to lose it. I’m getting her calmed down and stripping off the peed on jammers when I hear the oldest one start yelling. “No mommy, it wasn’t her fault, it was me!! I peed the bed!! Tell her it was me!!” She comes trucking down the hall to the bathroom stripping off her jammie bottoms and unders. She stickes them out at her sister and says “Look! It wasn’t your fault honey, it was mine, I’m sorry.” I take the unders and look and here, bless her little heart, she had squeezed out like four drops of pee so her sister won’t feel bad. THAT is love. That is how we roll.