There are mornings that feel just slightly… off.
This was one of those mornings.
I woke up to my five-year-old son, fully dressed—fully dressed—which, on its own, should have been enough to alert the authorities. But that wasn’t even the strangest part.
It was the way he was acting like the house was completely empty.
He was slowly walking down the stairs, calling out, “Hello? …hello?” like he had just wandered into an abandoned cottage in the middle of the woods and wasn’t entirely sure what he might find.
No rush. No chaos. Just cautious curiosity, like he expected the walls to answer back.
He has never done that before.
And then, of course, there was Amelia.
My three-year-old, who being naked in the morning is, at this point, less of a surprise and more of a lifestyle choice. (We do own pajamas I promise-{these ones here})
But this time, she made sure I noticed immediately.
So there I am, waking up to one child gently haunting the house like a tiny, polite ghost, and the other standing there completely nude like this is just how we greet the day now.
And somehow—somehow—they had both managed to leave their baby sister, Emily, completely abandoned in her crib.
Just… left her there.
No note. No explanation. Nothing.
Which, I’ll be honest, felt like the beginning of a very specific kind of day. The kind where the rules don’t quite apply the way you expect them to, and you get the distinct feeling that you missed a memo sometime in the night.
“Mommy,” she said, very seriously, “I need help in the bathroom.”
Now, she is fully capable of using the bathroom. We’ve done the whole process. We’ve celebrated the victories. There may or may not have been a sticker chart at one point that held more power than actual currency.
We’ve done the whole process. Sticker charts and all (this one held more power than actual currency in our house).
But there was something about her tone. Urgent. Certain. Like this mattered.
And I knew—just knew—this was not a drill.
So I got up, turned on the bathroom light, and gestured toward it with what I like to believe was quiet grace, but was probably more like a very tired woman trying her best.
(Side note: this little potty seat has saved my life more times than I can count.)
“Right here,” I said. “Let’s go.”
She stood there for a moment, considering it.
Then, calmly, she said, “I don’t want this bathroom.”
Of course.
Naturally.
Why would we use the bathroom that is directly in front of us, available, ready, and very much capable of solving the problem at hand?
“No,” she continued, already shifting into firm decision mode. “I want the one downstairs.”
Downstairs.
Which, in our house, is not just a quick little hop. It’s stairs. It’s distance. It’s time—time that, in this moment, felt… limited.
And here’s where motherhood becomes less about reasoning and more about reading the room. Or, in this case, reading the very real possibility of what happens if we don’t act quickly.
“Why don’t we just use this one?” I suggested, gently.
And just like that, something shifted.
If you’ve ever seen a storm roll in without warning, you’ll understand. One second, calm skies. The next, everything changes.
Because in Amelia’s mind, this wasn’t a small preference. This wasn’t a casual thought we could take or leave.
This was the plan.
And I had just disrupted it.
The tears came fast. Big feelings. Deep, committed feelings. The kind that make you question whether you accidentally broke some invisible rule you didn’t even know existed.
And that’s when it hit me—again, because motherhood loves a recurring theme:
Three-year-olds don’t operate without logic.
They just operate on a kind of logic we aren’t given access to.
Somewhere in her mind, the downstairs bathroom made perfect sense. Maybe it felt better. Maybe it was part of how she imagined this moment unfolding. Maybe, in a way I will never fully understand, it simply had to be that one.
And I stood there, in a perfectly good bathroom, trying to negotiate with someone whose internal rulebook is written in a language I only occasionally recognize.
There’s something almost magical about it, if I’m being honest. The way they move through the world with such certainty. The way they trust their instincts completely, even when those instincts are wildly inconvenient for everyone involved.
It’s not always easy to appreciate in the moment—especially when you’re mentally calculating how fast you can get downstairs versus how fast a situation can escalate.
But still… there’s something there.
So yes, there was a standoff.
Yes, there were feelings.
And yes, I had a very strong sense of how this could all end if we didn’t reach a solution quickly.
Did we make it downstairs in time?
I’ll just say this: motherhood has a way of keeping you grounded in reality, no matter how enchanted the morning might feel.
And if you know, you know.
If you don’t… one day, you might find yourself standing in a perfectly good bathroom, wondering how you got there—
and why it’s suddenly the wrong one.
If you’re in the toddler stage with me, here are a few things that have made life slightly less chaotic lately:
Witch, Please 
Leave a comment