Another Victory

With the exception of a handful of days, we've been swimming every single day this summer.  Living a couple of blocks off the lake has turned out to be our saving grace this year.  The Princess couldn't be happier than when she's in the water, and The Hubbs and I have come to depend upon it as well.

Our plans for Labor Day weekend included one thing: swimming.  We wanted nothing more than to see how many hours we could spend at the lake over these last four days.

And then...

On Friday afternoon, we were at our neighborhood beach for about ten minutes or so before a guy came by on his boat telling us that he had received an email saying that the lake had been closed due to a bloom of blue-green algae that can be harmful to people.

We got out of the lake and went home, showering thoroughly to avoid any adverse effects.  Checking the all-knowing Internet, our fears were confirmed: the lake was closed until further notice.

This is how we had planned to spend the long weekend:

Instead, we had to come up with alternatives.  There were quite a few hits and quite a few misses along the way, but one alternative afternoon activity just kills me.

On Sunday, our girl was restless.  She saw me outside watering my flowers and began to fuss.  I called inside to The Hubbs, and we decided it would be a good idea to let her play in the sprinkler.  She came out in her favorite ruffle-bottom bathing suit and had an absolute blast.

Our front yard is fenced in, so it's pretty great for our purposes.  We let The Princess have her fun where we could keep an eye on her from the living room.  Every couple of minutes, we'd see our girl grinning and running through the sprinkler, happily stimmy-fliddling little droplets of water.

And then...

The Hubbs peeked out the front window and exclaimed, "What the...?"

Well, naturally, I had to get up to see what was going on.  And, boy, am I glad I did.

Stepping out onto our front stoop, I took in the view.  The ruffly bottom of our girl's swim suit was lying discarded near the sprinkler, and she was streaking across the front yard and cackling at the top of her lungs.

Once we wrangled the streaker, we noticed something else was awry.

Mm-hmm.

The only question at that point was: where is it?

I took her inside, plopped her on the pink froggy potty to finish her business, cleaned up her little bottom, and got her set up with a new pair of panties and a Pull-Up.  Leaving her with The Hubbs, I took a strip of TP out into the front yard to commence my search.

There it was, not far from where we caught her running, smack in the middle of the front yard.  As I bent down to pick it up, this whole situation struck me as the funniest thing I'd ever heard.

I mean, here we are, trying so very hard to potty-train our girl.  Each day, we celebrate tiny little victories like thinking to pull our pants down when we have to go.

Really, what was so wrong with this?  In the middle of the front yard, in full view of the road and all of our neighbors, our little girl dropped trou and pooped.  Because she had to.

It's all in our perception, y'all.  This could have been a hugely negative experience for some people, but me...I prefer to see it as another victory.

Oh, and P.S.  Her doggies are very proud of her.  They've decided she's finally worthy of the title Bulldog In Training.