I Can Do It Myself

My son turned three recently and is on a "I can do it myself" kick. For the most part I think this is a wonderful thing- he is learning to be more independent and he feels so proud of himself when he accomplishes something without help. The downside is that there are just some things that a three year old is not capable of doing. When this occurs either he gets frustrated, I get frustrated or we both get frustrated.

Today was a mommy gets frustrated moment.

I took a shower when my daughter was down for her morning nap and when I got out I heard her crying and I saw that my son had on different underwear than I put on him and that they were on backwards. If you are a mom of a potty training child you must know that this cannot be good- and oh boy it wasn't.

Lets just say he had a poopy accident and decided he could change his underwear himself and he left a trail through out the bathroom, hallway and kitchen. While I was trying to clean my son was whining that he wanted a snack, whining that he wanted to watch TV and playing with my daughter (this means that he was pushing her and taking any and every toy that she was trying to play with). I told him that I was busy cleaning up his poop trail and that if he had a problem with it then next time he would need to crap on the potty.

An hour later I was still in my bathrobe but the natural disaster that my son made was cleaned up.

I then told my son that it was nice that he tried to clean himself up but that next
time he needed to ask for help. What I would really like to ask him is why this stuff never happens on Saturdays when I am at work and my husband is with him all day.