duck duck goose - toilet games with a toddler

Have you ever tried using the washroom with a toddler? It's a little bit like duck duck goose. You turn around and around until you can eventually catch them unaware, bop them on the head and sit down quickly. 

Now try doing that in a public restroom. Trying to keep them passive for the duration of your visit to the porcelain throne is hard work but usually possible. 

Unless you get the trots. 

Once you're 'shituated' (sorry I couldn't resist) it's not like you can get off the toilet to coerce them not to crawl under the bathroom stall door and take off with the first friendly looking stranger. So, you frantically root through the diaper bag looking for a toy, a book, a snack... anything to occupy your little explorer until your body has concluded its evacuation.

Of course if you're like me, you forgot to fill the snack trap, the books came out on the car ride to the store and in your haste to get to the washroom in time, there they remain on the backseat and you're pretty sure that cute little wooden truck fell out in the parking lot as you attempted to rush inside with a toddler who - only when it's inconvenient - insists on walking everywhere on her own.

So, after you have attempted to give a puppet show with diapers, and had a tea party with a water bottle and an empty Tupperware container, and you only need 2 more minutes, when you find that stale, broken, MAGNIFICENT cookie at the bottom of the bottom of the bag, you weep just a little.

Now, you are the mama who is hidden in the stall with your toddler who is happily munching away on a cookie while you cry tears of joy and you thank the gods it's not Montezuma's revenge.