I Taught Ethan to Clean Toilets Today - Oh The Drama!

For those of you who have little boys (and even some grown ones) in your life, you know that having the toilet seat left up is the least of our problems when it comes to the bathrooms in our homes.  You know what I'm talking about here.

Now, I promise you I clean my house and that includes my toilets, but no one would ever know it if they came into my home and needed to go potty.  I do have proof however.  There are three facilities in our home, one downstairs off the kitchen and living room, one upstairs for our son and one in the master bathroom.  The one in the master bathroom is always clean.  That should prove that I do clean them.  But you wouldn't know it by looking at the others.

To spare you the disgusting details I decided not to take "before" photos.  You're welcome.  I think you can use your imagination.  Just picture one eight year old boy whose only concern with being neat when he takes care of his business is in hoping mom or dad won't notice his untidy behavior.

Tired of having to go up to use my bathroom all the time because I couldn't stand the thought of using the downstairs one I took matters into my own hands today.

No more asking Ethan to be neat when he went.  No more begging him.  No more complaining.  Nope.  I took a different approach today.

I told him we were going to do a project together.  He got all excited when he heard this because he loves doing projects with mom.  Little did he know that the project was going to be learning to clean toilets.  (Okay, I did feel a little quilty here, I mean I had him all excited about doing something fun with mom and then whammo - I burst that balloon right out of the sky.)

Our pleasure trip started with about five minutes of his trying to escape the bathroom repeating the mantra, "I'm not going to do it, I'm not going to do it."  I wish I could have gotten some pictures of that for you but I was too busy blocking the door.

This is Ethan's Bathroom

Once he calmed down and resigned to the fact that he was going to have to clean the toilets the theatrics came out a blazing with double barrels.

"This is disgusting!  This is gross!"  sniffle, sniffle.  Since level one (complaining) wasn't working on me, he decided to move it up to level two - crying.

See the open mouth?  Just insert a lot of noise coming out of there.

Okay, before we go any further I promise you I am not a bad mom, really I am not.  But if I had caved here and let him off the hook of cleaning the toilets I would forever be forced to go to the neighbors each time natured  called.  Besides, I'm doing this for his future girlfriends and some day future wife.

So between the crying (okay whaling), occasional escape attempts and pretend vomiting sound effects he managed to do a very good job.  I had him clean the toilet in his bathroom and the one downstairs, I cleaned my own myself.

This is the downstairs bathroom

After that I needed a stiff drink...of vitamin water.

Send your good vibes out to me because little does he know, this has become his very own personal new chore around the house.

"Ay Carumba!"