Overheard in the Hale Family

Yesterday, Gina had taken Hannah to her piano lesson and had Ellie with her.  They needed to do a little shopping afterward, so they went to the store.  Ellie, still a month before her second birthday, has been potty training for the last several weeks and has gotten pretty good at managing to keep things dry, although you have to keep her on a pretty regular schedule and not allow her to go too long between trips to the bathroom. 

While they were in the store, Gina thought that it would be a good time to take Ellie to the restroom because it had been a while.  Now, with Hannah, this was a major challenge because of the "flush-by-itself" toilets were a significant issue.  Hannah never was too excited about loud noises or just surprises in general, so that happened to her one time that the toilet flushed while she was sitting on it and that became a block for her throughout the rest of her potty training time.  Several strategies were employed to make sure that darn toilet didn't flush by itself while she was sitting on it!

So yesterday, Ellie is doing her thing, and it happens to be a flush-by-itself toilet.  Predictably, it flushes in the middle of her working everything out, so she looks at Gina and starts babbling, questioning what is going on.  Gina explains that this toilet flushes by itself and shows Ellie the sensor and how it works.  Gina then quickly received a study in the personality differences between our two girls.  Ellie evidently understood what was happening and calmly turned around to the sensor and said, "Thank you!"

Posted by Ryan Hale on October 5, 2007; 6:18:38 AM