Raising Real Men

So my boys are out of the house. Quinlan, the youngest, has been gone about a month or so. For years the boys have had their own bathroom and they were responsible for keeping it clean. Naturally, I checked their work.

Yesterday I decided to clean their bathroom. Despite the fact that no one has used it for about a month. What I found in the sink cabinet was amazing. In the cabinet, and this is not a complete inventory, was a broken mirror (it appears all the pieces, down to the tiniest shards, were there), four half-used deoderants, three razors, a hot-water bottle (I don't even remember owning this), two bottles of mouthwash, two towel bars, three socks, an empty container of cranberry juice (the big, 2-liter size), a Gameboy, various bathroom cleaning products, and an Indian headress (likely purchased at the party store). It appears that the boys have simply been cleaning the bathroom by cramming their clutter into the cabinet under the sink.

I went back in my mind to all the times I sent them into the bathroom to clean and all the times that I inspected their work. I would open the shower curtain, I would lift the toilet seat, I would check behind the toilet, and I would check behind the door. It never ocurred to me to check the cabinet.

Soon after potty training the boys, I decided to designate one bathroom in the house as the boys' bathroom. I also desginated one bathroom in the house as the public bathroom (the boys were banned from this bathroom). The no-boy bathroom meant that one bathroom could remain clean. I had to do this because the boys would start their business before they had really aimed their business. Thus, I had to clean the bathroom, and I mean the entire bathroom, several times a week.

I finally told my husband, "If you do not teach those boys how to hit the toilet, I am going to teach them to pee sitting down."

He immediately took the boys into the bathroom and said things like "just because you are in the bathroom doesn't mean you are free to let it go," and "you have to hear the splashing," and "if you miss, you clean!"

It seems real men do not have boys who pee sitting down. But does that also mean that mothers cannot have clean bathrooms?