Monday, December 1, 2008

The Automatic Flushing Toilet is Evil

We started potty training Bunny during Bubs' staycation and it worked. She is basically 99.9% trained (crosses fingers, knocks wood, hops on one foot in a circle and spits). Accidents have been few and far between. She even made it through an entire week dry (overnights included). And yes I'm bragging just a little bit.

I'm glad we waited until she was ready. All in all its been awesome . . . that is until we encountered the automatic flushing toilet.

Now I know the automatic flushing toilet was invented as a convenience. It exists so that we don't have to touch the germy handles, too keep things cleaner. It just exists and I never gave it any thought. As far as I was concerned, it was a good thing. Until now.

We had a lovely day at the zoo on Saturday. It was 45 and sunny. We were enjoying it because we knew it wouldn't last, the snow was due to hit on Sunday. Trips to the zoo would stop for the year. We hit all of our favorites including the baby orangutang, Mahal, for mommy and the snakes, jellyfish and bats for Bunny.

But then we had to hit the bathroom and it was not so nice. The automatic flusher went off while Bunny was sitting on the potty and she freaked the heck out. She wouldn't go. We tried the potty at the giraffe house. No. The lion house. No! The visitor's center? No, no, no.

She took one look at the potty and made up her mind, if she didn't see a flush handle she wasn't going to go. I tried telling her that we could cover up the automatic flush so it wouldn't go off. Yeah that didn't work so well.

"No momma, I don't like these potties. No flush. I want to go home and use my potty."

You can't really argue with that logic. And I really didn't want to mess up all of her hard work becoming potty trained so we went home. She was a trooper. She made it home without an accident.

But of course you don't want to have to leave every place you are to use the potty at home. We may not be so close to home the next time. We have to solve this before it becomes a huge problem.

So I did a little research on the issue and you know whats supposed to work? Post-it notes. You just put one over the red eye on the potty and it won't flush until its removed. So simple, so easy. So now mommy is going to buy a huge stack of post-it notes and never leave home with out one.

7 comments:

MamaCarter said...

Oh, poor Bunny. I understand her reaction - I had one flush under me and it scared me too. I was about to suggest post it notes, but you already figured that out!

Anonymous said...

I've heard of other kids freaking at the automatic flushing toilets as well. Also, watch out for airplane toilets. For some reason, they've been known to scare the recently potty trained too.

Kate Coveny Hood said...

Now THAT is useful information! Definitely need to keep post it notes in my purse from now on.

nicole said...

that's awesome! i'm stocking up!

JaneYamaguchi said...

I'm glad to hear about post it notes- our solution has been for me to sit on the back of all the automatic flushing toilets- then she goes!

wfbdoglover said...

smart mommy! Wish I would have thought to look for that answer on the internet!

Good job!

Connie said...

Yeah ~ Im still scared of those auto toliets. Sometimes it's the thougth that they could suck me right down with the amount of gusto some of them have; othertimes it's the fact that the kids school installed them so random floaters at home appear (because they don't have to flush at school). Yuck all the way around.