The Potty Seat

This morning the girls were in the best mood - just running around, acting silly.  I turned to head towards the bathroom where the girls were making lots of commotion to find Madeline running out of the bathroom with the potty seat on top of her head, like a wreath, just giggling away!  "Madeline, take the potty seat off your head.  That's dirty Madeline!  Take it off!"  The more I told her, the more she laughed and pulled down tighter on the seat with those lovely handles on each side.  And then it happened.  It popped all the way down around her little neck.

For a minute there, she laughed, and I did not.  I sat down on the floor to help her get it off her head, but it wouldn't.  It was stuck.  I pulled and she started crying.  Here was this sweet little face with a look of worry surrounded by a pink potty seat.  I called Chris to come quick, we had a problem.  

He stepped out of his office to find Madeline and I struggling to get this potty seat off her head. (Is this really happening??) It wouldn't budge!  We could get it up over her face, but when it got to her forehead, it just wouldn't come off!  We turned it every imaginable way and pulled and pulled, nothing.  Chris went to get the soap.

He lathered her little head and forehead with soap to try to lubricate the seat over her head.  Now she was really screaming.  With a soapy head, he pulled while I held her still.  Nothing.  Now panic was starting to set in as Madeline began crying "ALL DONE!  ALL DONE!"  Sorry Madeline, we're not all done.  It's not just gonna come off!

I found myself laughing and crying my eyes out, all at the same time!  I laughed at the image of us heading to the ER with a 2 year old wrapped in a potty seat around her head.  Just to look at this situation from a birds eye view made me laugh hysterically!  But at the exact same time, I couldn't stop crying because my child was in pain!! Every time Chris would pull on the seat, her little forehead would stretch and then be left with awful little indention marks!  This made me bawl my eyes out.  What in the world were we going to do?!

Finally, the seat popped up and off of her little head, thanks to a very controlled daddy who did what it took to pull that little seat off her head.  She immediately grabbed me and wrapped her arms around my neck and would NOT let go. I just kept holding her and loving on her, then tried to rinse the soap out of her hair, but NO!!! She wouldn't let me pull her away long enough to rinse it off, so she just laid that sweet little soapy head on my shoulder and held tight.

As I was walking around the house with little Madeline wrapped tight around me, I heard this little tiny voice say out of the clear blue, "Children, obey...." she started reciting her memory verse!! Colossians 3:20 -- "Children, obey your parents in everything."  Oh child!!!  You have made the perfect ending to a story that will stick with you for the rest of your sweet life!!!!!

She's still wrapped around my neck, now fast asleep as I write this.  The smell of apples and the stickiness of the soap still in her hair, laying on my neck fills my senses as she sweetly sleeps, not letting go.  I wonder if she'll let go when she wakes up?

Lesson learned in that memory verse she and her sissy have vigilantly (and oh so cutely) been reciting to me for the last week.