Sometimes I wonder if all my children have a bladder the size of a walnut. I’m usually contemplating this during a film screening that we’ve been invited to as I make my fourth or fifth trip to the toilet. Fortunately it often doesn’t matter as the plots of kids films aren’t especially labyrinthine but it is irritating none the less.
Sometimes we have a bit of a dash to get to these screenings as I take the three kids to organised swimming lessons on a Sunday morning. I’ve been going for almost 5 years now, and aside from a few weeks, I’ve been in the pool with one of the kids every single lesson. Ned is currently the one with parental involvement in the swimming and I’m told he’s almost ready to get on without me. This will be a watershed moment and I can’t wait- I can just sit pool side, sip my coffee and wave absent-mindedly at the kids. It will be awesome.
The format of the lessons are the little kids go in at 9am, with older siblings sitting pool side, then at 9:30am the bigger kids go in, which means Fifi and the Boy usually sit pool side for half and hour before their lesson. I’ve always thought it a little suspicious that none of the three kids has ever had to rush out of the pool to do a wee but I’ve not really thought much about it and to be honest it’s probably safer that way. Last Sunday though, Ned, who has recently decided to toilet train himself off his own back, asked to come out for a wee part way through his lesson. I asked if he could hold it until after we’d finished and he told me he could but when we got into the changing rooms, he said he didn’t need to go, so I figured he’d had a crafty wee in the pool. However when the older two had finished their lesson, half an hour later, Ned demanded to go for a wee. Quite urgently in fact. So I took him to the loo, held him up at the urinal and marvelled at the amount of wee he had somehow managed to contain inside his 3 year old form. I can only imagine that volume of fluid had displayed the majority of his internal organs because it came out at a pressure I was envious at for a length of time I’m all too familiar with.
Epic.