an update on the status of potty training

"Wha-what?" you say. "Potty training? Aren't your kids all potty trained?"

Well, they are and they aren't. Let's check the numbers:

• I've got two kids regularly peeing the bed at night. One of them will not wear pull-ups. I have another kid wearing pull-ups to bed, but staying dry.
• I've got one kid shitting in his gender-neutral pants on a regular basis.
• I have an assortment of children who have pee accidents when stressed/busy/embarrassed to ask to use the bathroom/bored/hungry/experiencing any emotion.

Last week I dropped the kids off at the grocery store child care (which is called the Eagle's Nest) and when I picked them up an hour and 15 minutes later, two of them had peed their pants. They had successfully hidden this from the Eagle's Nest attendant -- Haney because she was wearing a dress and standing when she peed, and the older child because apparently the attendant hadn't looked anywhere below his neck. Because the poor guy was covered in pee. And this is my least-likely-to-pee-himself child, so I felt really awful about it. They just didn't want to tell the attendant they had to pee, even though she's really nice and they've been there with her a lot and another kid asked to pee when they first arrived and when a kid has to pee the store pages the parents and the parents come to take them to the restroom.

Then today, I went into our first floor bathroom to take a wiz. I observed poop smears at the rear of the toilet seat, and felt angry, but in the interest of not peeing myself I hovered (like at a particularly nasty filling station bathroom) and peed. I smelled something foul, and looked around to see whether a dead mouse was rotting on the floor. No, the smell was the garbage can, which was empty but for a wad of toilet paper and about 4 cups of pee. 

One of my boys, who shall remain nameless unless he does it again, fricking peed in the trash can. His brother outed him. I can only assume he did this more than once, because there was SO MUCH PEE. So I spent part of the morning rinsing and washing and scrubbing and sanitizing the trash can. And another part of the morning thinking, "This must be what it feels like to live at a truck stop. Except I have 95% fewer tasty treats on hand. FML."