carpet « Behind the Willows

Ivy, as usual, was the informer – “MOM, there is pee on the carpet” (Of course it was the carpet, it’s always the carpet)

Clara, predictably, denied all knowledge of anything.

Jane when questioned, following her older sisters teachings, blamed someone else: “It was the snowman.”

Me: “What did the snowman do?”

Jane: “It peed”

I was not about to take that info at face value.

In addition to the fact that I’ve never seen a peeing snowman this information was coming from the same girl who earlier told me that, “Dad going to shoot winter.” Jane is not the most reliable source in the household.

But, as I cleaned up the puddle, I started thinking.

I knew the cats were locked in a different bedroom.

The older girls claimed innocence that I had no reason to doubt.

Jane, a much more likely culprit, was wearing a diaper and she only knows how to get them off on her own not put them back on.

The dogs were outside.

John was outside.

I was sure I hadn’t done it…

So, who am I to doubt my little girl. Maybe Jane was right, maybe it was the snowman.

And, if there was indeed a peeing snowman in the house, of course he peed on the carpet – it’s always the carpet.

Our house is old, and most of our family, friends and acquaintances have at one point or another suggested the best fix for it might be either a wrecking ball or a fire. I don’t usually agree with these plans, unless it has to do with the carpet. The carpet in the house was less than perfect when we moved in. Then we arrived along with our unfortunate version of Murphy’s Law; if anything is going to secrete a bodily fluid it will end up on the carpet. The marginal carpets made the transition to nasty carpets and I have been removing them room by room. Only two rooms in the house still have carpet in them. Yet the Murphy’s Law of Carpets remains and every time something in this house pees on the floor, it hits carpet.

Tonight in the current installment of you’ve got to be kidding me. I stepped in a cold pee puddle on the carpet in the girls play room. The play room, the only room in the house I’m not planning on ripping the carpeting out of. No doubt because it used to be a storage room with the door always closed preventing anything from doing anything to the carpet. But I digress, back to the pee puddle. Given that Clara is working on personal diaper removal and therefore I am working on potty training her I assumed the puddle was hers.

I was wrong.

A long conversation with Ivy later I learned that it was in fact Ivy’s puddle. This conversation, which was conducted in calm reasonable tones by both parties should have won me some sort of award in the Best Instance Of Mom Not Losing Her Cool category. Especially when it concluded like this:

Me: “But why did you pee on the carpet?”

Ivy: “It was just the only place to go.”