Why I Love Gallon-Sized Ziploc Bags

Because I live in the suburbs which have been attaining so much rural land that you never need to travel to the "big city" for your shopping needs (because the former farmland now houses Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Old Navy and Borders) I do not fully grasp the enormity of the traffic in these parts, especially on a Friday.

My Aunt and Uncle had generously offered to give us a beautiful hutch, buffet and side table that they no longer needed/wanted and all we had to do was drive down there and retrieve it. So, silly me, I thought we'd hitch up the 'ol utility trailer and employ our children to sit still and behave for the 1 hour drive south to Tacoma (because Tacoma is just a little bit past Seattle, right? WRONG!) to get our "new" furniture.

The ride down was fine, we were late of course because I underestimated a) the traffic and b) Tacoma's distance south of Seattle. But, no worries. Brett and McRae artfully fastened, tied-down and secured our pieces in the tralier as Uncle Jack supervised. We dropped in on Aunt Joan at the library she is in charge of for a quick visit and off we go. We made a pit-stop a little north of Tacoma and had an "interesting" lunch consisting of a Papa Burger for Brett and popcorn chicken for the kids, we made the necessary stop to the loo and were back on the road again (I can hear Willie Nelson singing in the background), joining the crawl that was to become our way home.

Two hours later and 25 miles north of Seattle, inching along at a snail's pace at best, I hear the most fearful words in a parent's life: "I have to go potty Mommy".

Quick thinking leads me to this solution, mind you I am aware of the bad expample I set for my kids and the laws that were broken in the process, but what are you supposed to do in a situation like this? I will note that there was not a "safe" place to pull over for miles due to the highway construction. Into the back seat I climb, out comes a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, out come the baby wipes, out of her carseat comes my daughter, off go her underpants and I creatively fold the bag to form a seal around her behind and surrounding flesh, in order to catch anything and everything that may be on its way.

"Go ahead honey, I've got you" I assure her.

We wait, we encourage her (all of us at this time because we really don't want her to have an accident), we plead with her to make good use of the bag hanging between her legs. She gives it a good college try, but with no luck. I really can't blame her though, because even with the tinted windows she can see the cars passing us as our portable honey bucket rolls down the road.

I buckle her back into her carseat and return to my own and we try not to mention the words "water" or "waterfall" on the rest of the ride home. The ironic thing is that during the middle of our little experiment to see if a 2-year-old can potty in a Ziploc bag while standing on her mother's lap in an SUV during horrendous traffic, we were passed by a station wagon with, yup, a potty seat in the back. A real, honest-to-goodness plastic potty catching contraption that, if we had been going any slower, I would've asked to borrow, or buy from the brainiac mom driving the car.

The upside to this story is that Katie made it all the way home and did her thing in the proper location and I will always have a Ziploc bag, or 2 or 3, in the car "just in case".