So, each night, every night Thorin gets up and wanders into our room. Historically, the one adult who wakes up to his prompts drags him into our bed. It’s an easy way to deal, but probably not the most developmentally appropriate. So we’ve been making an effort to walk him back to his room and back in his own bed. He doesn’t protest and usually falls immediately to sleep.

This happened a few weeks ago and I was back asleep with everyone in their respective beds within a minute or two of being woken up.

About 4:30 a.m. he was back at the foot of our bed. Looking at the clock and knowing I ought to wake up soon enough; I grabbed his hands to drag him up into our bed.

They were wet.

Sweat?

I felt his arms.

Profuse sweat?

I felt his back and head.

No way that’s sweat.

I asked him why he was wet. He started explaining, but the answer was lost in translation.

“Show me.”

So he walked me to the bathroom and pointed to the toilet, which was almost dry.

He did not point to the floor where all that former toilet water was pooled, slowly leaking into the basement.

Now, we’re a ‘if it’s yellow, let it mellow,’ kind of family. I’m sure I was the last to pee and I’m pretty sure I let it mellow.

So there we stood before the crack of dawn looking at each other in silence and one of us was literally covered in piss.

And that person was the one wearing a smile.

Surveying the scene, it seemed as though he used the toilet as a sink to give himself an [insert regionally-specific ethnic slur]-shower.

A little background:

Our new place has opened up a world of accessibility to him. There’s the Thorin-level pantry with his snacks and the chair he climbs to browse his DVDs, which he can load and unload in the player himself. Everything’s on the same floor, so he has more freedom of movement (the old place has a steep and slippery wooden staircase with a child gate at the top. Basically he’s finding himself more empowered and the toilet incident was an attempt to do one more thing for himself. Misguided and high-yuck factor attempt though it was, it was apparent there was no malice

Luckily I didn’t lose my temper and give him some life-long complex about pee or baths or trying.

What can you do?

We have to make sure he’s safe (there’s now a latch safely out of reach on the outside of the bathroom door – something I’m reminded of at 3 a.m. a couple nights a week).

The fact is there were lots of ways he could have hurt himself in there as we slept peacefully. Covered in yellow water was definitely one of the more benign ways that could have gone down. He could have just as easily slashed himself with a razor or scalded himself (or slipped or drowned, etc., etc., horrible etc.).

And yes, we’re going to have to unteach him (and ourselves) that you, in fact, have to flush every time.

So, in a way, this one disgusting act has forced us to class up our act.

Funny how that works.