We were on our way down there on Saturday when Emma announced that she had to go to the bathroom. As most mother's have learned the hard way, I have too learned that when nature calls, you are going to answer. You only have a choice in which method you use to answer it. For the sake of any of you that might have a weak stomach, I'll skip the descriptions and just stay that the gas station restroom that we stopped at wasn't the finest of establishments.
But out of desperation, we entered into this tiny restroom with two stalls and about six ladies packed inside. I attempted to quickly push my inquisitive 5 years and 3.75 quarters (that's how she puts it) old child into a stall in hopes of avoiding sight of the machine that is holding certain contraceptives hanging on the wall but quickly realized that I had failed because the stalls were occupied.
We were standing there as I tried to point out the pretty pink color of the hand soap (opposite direction of contraceptives) in anticipation of what was about to happen. As you can guess, Emma turned to the machine and said, "Momma, what is in that machine"? Not wanting to totally lie to my child but also not wanting to have the conversation about the birds and the bees in front of six complete strangers, I replied "that's a machine with medicine in it". She then asked, "why"? to which I replied, "In case someone has an emergency and needs it right away". The whole room erupted into laughter and one woman congratulated me on ability as a mother to field hard questions. It was only later that I realized how fortunate I was that she didn't think to ask me what the medicine helped with.
When we got back in the car, I made a mental note of the exit number to be sure to avoid the stop on the way home and then waited until Emma put her headphones back on to watch her movie before I relayed the experience to Adam.
These kind of questions really aren't that rare for Emma. We tackled the "where do babies come from"? question when she was three and I was pregnant with her baby sister. It's not my fault that she some how deciphered that God took Chloe out of my belly button from my honest yet not complete explanation. Boy is she in for a surprise! It seems like I've should have taken some kind of class on these kind of things. And before you suggest any books for me to read, the stack of books on my nightstand is getting pretty tall. I don't go through them near as fast as I used to. Some kid at school with an older brother or sister might give her the information before I get to it. Book suggestions probably won't do us much good. However, I would love to hear any clever tips or funny stories you might have about these sort of topics.
Anyway, pictures from the trip. Not pictured: the medicine machine..
