Bathroom time is relative where kidlets are concerned...

There's a secret I've learned since having kidlets: all time that passes while a person is in the bathroom is relative. It's true at least for each and every time kidlets are somehow involved.

I first suspected time worked weird when I attempted to put my firstborn in a bouncy seat for thirty seconds so I could run to the bathroom without trying to balance an infant while using the facilities. My newborn screamed bloody murder during those thirty seconds, thus successfully managing to make it seem as if time had actually stopped. Those thirty seconds had to have felt as if they were really thirty years long.  However, when my husband was on baby duty and I attempted to take a twenty minute long shower, that time flew by as if in the blink of an eye.

After that nasty-looking umbilical cord stump dried up and fell off my baby, I learned that I could extend bathroom time once more by simply trying to give my daughter a bath. She would scream her bleepin' little head right off her shoulders for what seemed like hours on end. Then I would dry her off, dress her, and carry her out to another room only to discover a whole whopping ten minutes had passed.

Now that my kidlets are a bit older, the bathroom relativity is a bit different. They think they are only taking a shower for five minutes when it is really half an hour. They think I am taking forever to brush my teeth when it is the same exact two-minute cycle on my toothbrush that it's always been. They think five seconds is ten hours when it comes to applying shampoo to their wet heads. Oddly enough, they think ten minutes is really two seconds when it comes time to rinse out their conditioner. And don't get me started on them thinking that "washing" their hands for three seconds is the same as scrubbing their hands for sixty seconds or more.

They also apply this relative time to their siblings. ("Mom, make him get out of the bathroom so I can go potty! He's been in there forever!" "He's been in there precisely two minutes and you just went potty right before he did!") They want to personally spend entire days locked in the bathroom, but they think it is just moments. Then they accuse their siblings of taking far too long in the same location.

The long and short of it is this: When they need to spend tons of time in the bathroom, they do not. When they need to be in and out quickly, they are not. In both situations, their grasp of time is completely erroneous.

I'm still trying to figure out how to make this work in my favor so I can relax and take a nice, long, hot bath without them thinking the two minutes I'm in there is actually ten hours. Perhaps I should borrow somebody's screaming newborn, plunk him or her in a bouncy seat just outside of the bathroom door, and attempt to make those two minutes seem like four days just like when my kidlets were babies.