To pee or not to pee.

Alright, so for the last year or so that we have been working up to potty training and through potty training I have had many a moment where I have looked at mothers of boys and found myself seething with jealousy.  Little boys are so easy.  Gotta pee, go find a tree.  Now I know no child is really easy to raise, but grant me some slack here.  So during our first few weeks in Germany, on one of our daily pilgrimages to one of the numerous playgrounds in our neighborhood, my husband and I sat chatting on a bench watching our daughter play.  At one point we stopped speaking, noticing that moms kept disappearing behind a bank of trees with toddlers in tow, and then reappearing.  We looked at one another, mutually noting this phenomenon, and promptly moved our position for a closer look at what was happening behind these trees.  Our American minds astonished and flabbergasted, parents were taking their toddlers, boys and girls, behind the trees for potty breaks.  "But they're not wiping," commented my husband.  I chimed in with, "What if your aim is off and it hits your shoe?"  On the walk home though I began to have some retrospect to this situation.  Isn't having a few drips of splatter better than sopping wet pants?  Isn't teaching your child this is a bodily function and nothing to be ashamed of a good thing?  It definitely occurred to me that this beat those frantic stops at random rest areas and those rapid sprints home from the playground to use the potty only to find that she'd had an accident during the first block.  So the following day, on the way home from a walk to the grocery store, Mairin looked up at me and announced, "Mommy, I need to go potty."  I looked around, parked my grocery bags safely, ducked behind a bush, propped her on my forearms as I'd seen the other moms at the playground do, and in my best Monday night football voice encouraged, "Let's do this!"  Mairin looked up at me, I nodded, she went, gave her a shake, pants were replaced, and we were on our way.  Now I know that I may pay for introducing Mairin to this idea when we arrive back in the states next year, but on the flip side we've only had to change one pair of pants while out and about in the last 2 weeks.  I say, "When you gotta go, just go."