public potties

Yesterday was our 'monthly outing' to Robinson Township, a shopping area near Pittsburgh.  Morgan and I REALLY needed out of the house.  Plus it was time for another round of Little C lab work so we started our day date at Weirton Medical Center where I have enough blood taken to make me a little woozy.  The ladies in the lab are getting used to seeing me, and unfortunately, they might be seeing me even more often since the antibody levels are starting to rise. 

Afterwards, we were all starving.  Poor Morgan was saying 'I need food in my tummy, it would make me happy' because whenever we know we are going out to eat, we pretty much starve her so that she will eat while we are at a restaurant.  She had her breakfast sippy and that holds her over for a while but it was creeping up on 2:00 and that's a long time since breakfast for all of us.  We went to Longhorn Steakhouse (pretty darn tasty!) and she actually tried the bread and ate it!  See...starving her works...it makes her try new stuff.  Then she ate most of her mashed potatoes and even 2 bites of chicken tenders after a LOT of encouragement.  We were happy!  I asked her if she needed to potty and she said yes.

Here we go...public potty training.

I went to the 'family restroom' because it seemed less used.  I lined the side of the potty with about 500 sheets of toilet paper and helped Morgan get situated.  The very first thing she did was put her hands on that dirty nasty toilet and I wanted to scream!!!  I told her to hold on to my pants....which she did...and then I realized that after touching that dirty nasty toilet she was touching my dirty nasty pants. 

sigh.

But she used the potty!  And then I scrubbed her hands until they were red!  And her face, arms, feet, and all other exposed skin, just in case.

She ran back to our table yelling 'daddy I pee peed in the potty!!!!' and we received a lot of dirty looks from people diving into their steak.  Jeez people, she's THREE years old!  It's not like I encouraged her to run through a restaurant yelling about her potty success....

...or maybe I did.

just kidding...

Then we went to IKEA.  We LOVE IKEA.  It's such a fun place to go browse and find neat stuff you never knew you needed.  Yesterday we bought Morgan a new dresser (white to match her new IKEA bed) and a tall skinny shelf for our bedroom, plus I ran across these awesome washable fruits and vegetables for Morgan to play with.  While at IKEA I asked Morgan twice if she needed to potty...and of course she did.  Sadly, the bathrooms at IKEA were not clean, but that's just how 99% of public restrooms are.  Morgan is too young to learn the 'hover' maneuver.  Thank goodness IKEA offers toilet seat covers.  I pulled about 20 out and formed a protective layer of tissue paper worthy of Princess and the Pea.  Then we took birth baths in the sink to try to rid ourselves of all potty germies.

We survived our first day of public potties!

And we also managed to cram 3 long IKEA furniture boxes into our short Land Rover...I'm still impressed.