It was a gentle, warmish November 1st night. Halloween had just passed and things no longer went bump in the night.
All the kids had gone to bed and had already become acclimated to the nice dark rear bedroom. Chimsta and I were winding down ourselves (in the bright main room) when suddenly the back bedroom door exploded open. Munchlax stood there in the opening looking like a wild man, savagely ready to hunt and gather, but blinded by this strange new light source. He mumbled incoherently and then after a moments pause he shrieked like a horde of wild yaks were descending upon him and bolted back into the safe confines of his dark cave.
I casually looked over at Chimsta and said “my turn” and went back to see what was going on. I found Munchlax perched at the head of his bed and asked him what’s the matter. He quickly crawled down to me at the foot of his bed, laid his head on my shoulder and said “it doesn’t feel good”. In a reassuring voice I asked “Sorry Munchlax, what doesn’t feel good?”. He repeated “it doesn’t feel good” a couple more times then hopped out of bed and said “I’m going to the bathroom”. OK, that seemed rational.
Now, it’s important to insert here that we have a bathroom in the back room where the kids sleep, and one in the main area. But the bathroom in the back room is super small and turning the light on will flood the entire back room where all the rest of the kids are still trying to sleep. Munchlax didn’t go for the main bathroom, he went for the kids bathroom. There isn’t much distance between the Munchlax’s bed and the bathroom (maybe 8 feet), but when the beds are put down I kind of have to “duck walk” to get there. It’s also important to note that what’s going on here is Munchlax sleeps super deep and he isn’t really awake. In fact in the morning he won’t really remember this incident took place.
Munchlax easily beat me to the bathroom. By the time I got halfway there he already had the door open, the lights on, and was tugging at his pants. Judging by how difficult it was to get the pants off, and especially by the look on his face you’d think they were glued on. I got there before he could “get started” (and before the pants came off, with the door still open…) and started to suggest that he should use the front bathroom so we could turn the lights on and let the rest of the kids sleep. At this point he gave me this look of deep confusion combined with annoyance, similar to when you ask someone how many boogers they can hold in their mouth divided by their age, quickly followed by the sounds of rushing water. Chimsta, quietly resting in the main room still, didn’t know what was going on, but silently got up to get a towel. I gave up on the idea of getting to the main bathroom and switched to “OK, Munchlax, let’s just get on the toilet right here. This was followed by a couple shrieks of confusion followed by more tugging against the invisible glue still stubbornly holding the pants on. I then gave up on words and lifted him up on the seat to try and capture anything that was still left. More shrieks of confusion followed.
At this point Chimsta shows up with a towel and clean pajamas, and I began the cleanup. Due to an earlier incident where the back bathroom sink had been left running and had flooded half of the back room I had ordered a water sensor that will give off a 120db alarm when wet. The sensors had arrived two days earlier and I haven’t had time to install them in the back bathroom yet. As I was cleaning up the very large puddle in the very small bathroom I was very, very grateful for procrastination.