I Just Want You to Know_ Letters to My Kids on Love, Faith, and Family - Kate Gosselin [38]
Little Leah “reading” a magazine on the potty.
One Sunday in the middle of potty training, we picked up the kids after church, and the teacher was telling me that Hannah pooped in her Pull-Up and that he changed her. I couldn’t hear him over the hallway commotion. As we were all walking down the hall together, Hannah said, “Mommy, I told Jesus that I had to go potty.” Jon and I both laughed hard.
Later in the car we started laughing again about it, and Jon asked, “Hannah, what is your teacher’s name?”
She replied, “Jesus.”
Mystery solved.
Then came the boys, which definitely did not go as smoothly. They were always more focused on playing in the moment than on planning for the future. I am always amazed that the girls were potty trained a full six months before the boys. Even so, they were all growing up, regardless of whether or not they chose to be potty trained.
One Sunday, I was sitting on the sofa in the playroom with everybody. Hannah climbed up next to me, and I asked her if she would sit on my lap.
She said, “No, I wanna sit.”
“But you are my baby, and I want to hold you.”
“I not a baby. I girl.”
I almost cried. These are the youngest kids I’ll ever have. They are two, and they sometimes don’t want to sit on my lap anymore. But I suppose this is all a part of the mixed emotions I’ll experience at each of their milestones.
10
BLOOD, BAND AIDS, AND BATHS IN THE KITCHEN SINK
One phone call, one sick child, one exhausted mom. Any one of these could throw off an otherwise good day. While at the time I couldn’t always laugh in the moment, I’ve learned the importance of keeping a healthy perspective and remembering to laugh later. One of my most memorable bad days happened one summer in 2006.
In July our church had a Vacation Bible School (VBS) program in the evenings for a week. Jon had to come home from work early, and the plan was that I would have the kids ready to go so we could all just hop into the van to make it to church on time. While the little kids were taking a nap on that Monday afternoon, I was making dinner and getting ready to go that night. When it was time to get them from their nap, I headed upstairs and opened their bedroom door.
“OH! OH MY!” There were shards of glass everywhere, and the kids were walking all around them. For a split second, I thought a burglar had broken in, but I quickly realized they had gotten into a locked bin that held diapers and lotions, and had smeared butt paste all over the room. “Let me check your feet,” I frantically said. The broken glass around the room was my main concern.
The aftermath of the nursery destruction.
I picked each kid up and brought them one by one to the bathroom to clean them up. But what was that sticky stuff everywhere? “Where are your diapers? Is that poop on—?”
As if getting into the clean diapers wasn’t enough, they had ripped off their own diapers, along with the accompanying poop.
Breathe, Kate, breathe, I had to remind myself.
With the kids finally cleaned up and a fresh diaper on each one, I left them in the bathroom while I ran down to my bedroom to grab the camera. When I walked back into the war zone—their bedroom—I surveyed the damage and took photos. I still couldn’t believe it: Dressers were knocked over with drawers spilling out their contents. Light bulbs and lamps were broken, which is where the glass came from. It was nothing short of a miracle that no one was hurt or cut.
Why hadn’t I heard anything? I had been downstairs the entire time! How could this have happened without me knowing?
“Is that a hole in the wall?” I realized they had even peeled a section of paint and dry wall off the wall. I started to freak out, but consoled myself by remembering that no one was hurt or trapped under the dresser. This could have been disastrous.
I knew we really should have been downstairs eating dinner already in order to be ready by the