How did we end up here?

Sometimes in life you wonder how you ended up in a particular spot, like when you wake up in the morning and you're all tangled up uncomfortably in the covers.

Tonight, Leigh and I had one of those moments when Mia was running around in only her socks in the bathroom of a doctor's office.

This is how we got there.

We've been trying to get Mia to become familiar with the potty. She's really interested in it, so we were thinking it might be a good time to capitalize on that interest. She's peed a total of once on the toilet, and she was so terrified of what was going on that she left off and into my lap. (I promise not to tell too many stories about potty training. Really.)

Fast forward to today, when the daycare director called to say that she was crying and holding her diaper. Her teachers suspected a bladder infection.

We picked her up and took her to the walk-in clinic. The nurse gave us two options: let her pee in a cup or put in a catheter. Well, that was an easy choice.

While the nurse rustled up a cap, she had us take off Mia's diaper and hold her over a little bucket, so that if she peed, we could at least capture it. Let me just say this: a 20-month-old child is TOTALLY interested in sitting perfectly still inside a tiny bucket.

The nurse returned and took us to the bathroom, where she put big cup under the toilet seat. She also handed us a cup of water for Mia to drink. All we had to do was wait for Mia to pee.

And let me say this: a 20-month-old child is TOTALLY interested in sitting perfectly still on a toilet until she pees.

So we coaxed her into drinking some water, and we realized that her shirt might get in the way and her shoes might contaminate the bucket if she moved wrong. So we stripped her down to her tiny little blue socks. She thought this was great, inexplicable fun.

We then tried to get her to sit still and pee.

We realized we could be trapped in that bathroom for hours. Hours.

We lucked out and Mia went fairly quickly, but it was so sad. She screamed and screamed and screamed. We pulled her off as soon as she was done, tears still streaming down her face. We were sure that she had an infection.

Turns out: nope. She just had no idea what the heck was going on. She was totally fine. The physician's assistant said she probably was grabbing her diaper because she is weirded out by it now. Great. Naked baby in the bathroom for nothing.