The other night, Emma came to me and said some dreaded, awful words.

“Mommy.  You have to see what happened in the bathroom.”

This is usually a preface to something either a) gross and/or disgusting, b) horrifically messy, or c) mysteriously unexplainable.  And sometimes?  It’s d) all of the above.

Because she proclaimed this with upheld hands and a proud smile, I was hopeful that it was none of the four options listed above.  Perhaps it was something GOOD, right?  What were the odds, right?

The odds were not good.

I followed her into the bathroom… where I couldn’t immediately detect anything out of sorts.  In fact, everything looked great!

“Okay… what happened?,” I asked, still cautiously looking around.

“Well,” she said, putting her hands on her hips with a sigh, “the floor is NOT wet.”

Sure enough, it wasn’t. 

“Annnnnnnddddd,” she went on dramatically, “the counter is NOT wet.”

Two for two, y’all.

“And, Mommy,” she said, so tickled with herself, “the walls are NOT wet.”

They weren’t… nor should they ever have been.  Come to think of it, the floor shouldn’t have been wet, and the counter probably shouldn’t have either, and —

“Oh, my,” I breathed out, my eye finally catching the pile of sopping wet towels on top of the toilet.  “What happened to those towels?”

“Mommmmm-eeeeeee,” Emma sighed.  “I told-ded you!  The floor is NOT wet.  The counter is NOT wet.  The walls are NOT wet!”

All the pieces fell into place.  “Oh, good grief, Emma.  WERE they wet?!  How did they get wet?!”  Visions of toilet water all over the bathroom, along with invisible germs, and bacteria of the worst kind swam (no pun intended) through my mind.

“But, Mommy,” she insisted, still smiling and still so very proud of herself, side-stepping my question entirely, “I clean-ded it ALL up!  It is NOT wet anymore!”

A pause as I watched her, she watched me, and I had to decide whether to flip out and run in with bleach and disinfectant right that very minute… or congratulate her on taking care of the problem.  (In her own way.)

“Oh… well, way to go, Emmy!  You sure did… it!”

A big, huge laugh and a matching smile.  “I know, right?!”

I’m convinced this is how Emma and I will survive the rest of her childhood, as she bows to my OCD tendencies by scrubbing toilet water all over the bathroom (ugh!) in an effort to “clean” and as I keep myself from freaking completely out so as to not squash her sunny disposition. 

Give and take, y’all. Give and take.