Letter Cups

The Scene:

My friend Kelley and I are downstairs preparing a Valentine's Day craft for the Lainey, Gage, and Ainsley. We are getting the supplies ready and making sure that the floors are covered. Kelley is making the cornstarch/water mixture on the stove and taking breaks to cut pieces of yarn while I'm mainly just trying to keep Walker content (Kelley did all the work here!!). We hear the kids talking and giggling upstairs, and we make a comment or two about how great it is to hear our kids playing so nicely together.

We decide to head up the stairs to help the kids make the move downstairs to the kitchen for craft time. About halfway up the stairs we hear water running. I immediately think of the bathtub - I am just certain that they're giving the toys and dolls (and perhaps themselves) a bath. Well. That was not the case.

We see the three kids standing in front of the toilet, attempting to flush it repeatedly. As we approach, we also notice that there is a foam letter "H" in the toilet trying to avoid getting flushed. This naturally leads us to ask what else has gone in the potty, and Lainey tells us that they had put the "letter cups" in there. And Gage says that the letter cups "went under that hole in the potty." At that point, I ask Lainey how many "letter cups" (still not totally sure what she's talking about, but assuming they are bath toys) went down the potty. She says three. Well, I clue in at this point as to what she's talking about. She is referring to the small plastic cups with numbers on them that we play with in the bathtub. I count that there are 3 left in the tub, so we are missing two. So two went down the potty.

The rest of the story is that we had a plumber come out to help the toilet flush more efficiently (it was slightly clogged but not completely) and he successfully pushed the "letter cups" into the sewage pipes...and the hope is that they will go on their merry way and not cause us any more problems. And we had several discussions with Lainey about what goes in the potty and what does not go in the potty.

So, lesson learned. Always check on your kids. Even (or especially) if it sounds like they're having a good time together!