Cute, or gross? You decide.

I was hanging the washing out today when Chief came running outside.

"Mama, can you come? Asher's in the erm. Ash is in the toy..erm he's..."

Don't you love the way 3 and 4 year olds just suddenly lose the ability to formulate full sentences? It's like they develop this amazing vocabulary and then all of a sudden forget how to string all the different words together. It's like they can't actually get the words out quick enough, as though their brain is working faster than their mouth. Chief has the opposite problem too.

So anyway, there I am thinking ahead of her, wondering if Happy had fallen in the toy box and couldn't get out. Seemed more likely she'd persuaded him to climb in, or even stuffed him in there herself. I couldn't hear him crying or yelling so it couldn't be too urgent.

"He's in the erm... He's erm. Ash is in the..."

Oh for crying out loud, spit it out will you. I actually said that to her once and she looked at me strangely and then spat. Such literal creatures.

"Mummy, Ash is in the bath, the toy, bath, erm, the..."

Starting to make a bit more sense now. We have one of those big round plastic tubs, I just love them, you know the kind that can be an ice bucket, or a toy box, or a washing basket? Well, we used to bath Chief in ours, then it graduated to holding all the bath toys and currently it is temporary storage for random toys in our lounge. Makes sense that he could climb in easily but not get out so easily. I'm sure Chief has done that before too.

"Mama, Ash is in the bathroom, the toilet bathroom. Asher is in the toilet room. He's got poo. Can you come?"

Oh hang on. Not what I was expecting.

Me: "What's he doing in the toilet?"

Chief: "He did a poo. Can you come wipe his bottom?"

Me: "What? Isn't he wearing a nappy?"

Chief: "No."

Me: "Why not?"

Chief: "Because he's on the toilet"

Groan. Ask a stupid question.

Turns out that Happy One did a poo in his nappy so Chief decided she'd take him to the toilet. She set the toddler seat up for him, took his nappy off and then got a bit stuck for what to do. So she shut the door, with him and his dirty nappy inside and came to get me. Now, he hadn't played with the nappy, but it was a stinker and they had made a bit of a mess trying to get him to sit on the toilet seat. But all that aside I am actually very impressed by this big sisterly act. She even wanted to wipe his bottom once she'd watched how I did it. But she soon gave up and said, "you do it" when she realised it was a stubborn one. Yes, cute but still totally gross.