For the first leg of the trip to go see my sister get married in Virginia, we drove to Julie’s brother’s house in Oxford, NJ. I wish I could convey the experience of driving many hours with a four year old in the car but you’ll have to make do with this brief anecdote.
At one point, Julie distributed food to the kids. It occupies them and feeds them – it’s two, two, two things in one. We had given Alec one of those half-pint containers of milk to drink and, in order to eat his other food better, he had put it down, wedged between his leg and the lip of the car seat. There’s a perfectly good cupholder attached to the car seat, but he thought it would be more convenient to have the milk carton wedged right there. Right where it could tip over.
Can you see what’s coming yet? I couldn’t, because I was trying to drive and not watching where Alec was putting his carton.
So all of a sudden Alec starts to cry. Julie and I turn around to look and there’s Alec, sitting in his car seat, munching away at Cheerioes or something, and a look of anguish on his face.
“My jeans are getting wet!” he laments, shoving a few more Cheerioes into his mouth.
My first thought is that he urinated on himself, without asking to use the toilet. He’s only been recently trained it was the best I could come up with on such short notice.
“Do you need to use the potty, Alec?” I asked. No, he didn’t. That’s when Julie noticed that the milk carton, although carefully wedged between leg and seat, had tipped over and milk was soaking through his clothes.
Why he didn’t notice this himself is puzzling, because all he knew was that his jeans were getting wet. He didn’t know the source of the wetness, and he didn’t care. He just wanted his parents to solve the problem.
It will be interesting to watch him transition from being so totally dependent on us to attempting to be more independent than he’s able. Nine more years to go…
But seems to have a drinking problem