I learned the hard way that while I was upstairs for a few minutes getting ready to leave the house, my kids chugged down the entire contents of their 750 mL water bottles.
In the seventy-five minutes that we were in Costco, I had to make five (yes five!!) emergency trips to the bathroom with the kids. Between walking to the bathroom (always, seemingly, from the farthest corner of the store), the kids doing their business, going through the hand washing process, and then laughing (again and again, and always with a sense of wonder) over those super-fast, skin-wrinkling, hand air-dryers, each trip consumed ten minutes of time. On our last trip, as we passed by the customer service counter, the clerk standing there recognized us (how could she not), and smiled.
"Again??!" she said.
"Yup," was all I could bring myself to say at that point.
Seriously, we spent way more time in the bathrooms than we did shopping.
Unbelievable.
Ugh. Our boys constantly drink everything in their water bottles no matter how much we encourage saving and sipping. At their foster home, they were given 500ml water bottles (disposable) and sipped occasionally, setting them down or even putting them in the fridge in between.
ReplyDeleteBut with our perma-bottles, for some reason, they treat them totally different, and drink the whole thing every time. They can even get possessive and obsessive about their water, demanding that we remove the lids for that last drop, drinking it in one gulp until they are literally gasping and sputtering for air. I have no idea what the difference is.
We visited the foster family in the spring, and before we had a chance to intervene, they were given the 500ml bottles. Which they sipped and set down, just like they used to (although our eldest became extremely possessive and irritable, having one of these bottles again - he started accusing people of stealing it if he couldn't remember where he set it, and was ornery and rude when Geoff & I insisted on carrying it on a hike down a steep hill - and to tear him apart from this strange relationships with this water).
When the boys moved here, they CONSTANTLY asked for water, and we tried having their bottles full and available all morning, which didn't work because they drank it all at once (and then we had many episodes like you did at Costco). We couldn't be available to dispense it in small portions on a constant basis, so we went to a "drinks are served and portioned at meals and snacks" model. They stopped asking in between, and now we generally portion their water bottles when we go out, keeping more water in a parent-controlled larger bottle to dispense as needed. At least it helps with the bathroom trips, and makes sure that they have something to drink after meals on the road, etc.
Bahaha :). I'm laughing because I feel your pain. We always end up doing the bathroom run from the furthest side of the grocery store with a full cart...EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. regardless of whether we had gone to the bathroom 2 minutes before leaving home!!!! ARGHHHH. Thanks for the laugh.
ReplyDeleteGlad that you are back, by the way, and I hope your dad is recovering well. Coincidentally, my father also broke his leg this summer while portaging a canoe on a 10 day backcountry trip- and completed the remaining 3 days of the trip. Needless to say, he's being paying all summer.
Thanks for the empathy and the laughs, guys!! Gotta love it!!
ReplyDeleteRuth