At the end of last year my wife and I celebrated a milestone. Two of our three children are now able to operate with complete independence in the bathroom…

… or so we thought…

It was my Mother (Nana to the kids) who first noticed the suspicious drips and drops sprinkling her bathroom floor. The splashes were noted again and again over the course of several weeks whenever our three-year-old (Emma) had been there. Each time, the mysterious moisture was dismissed by Nana as the product of enthusiastic hand washing.

The way Nana tells the story, she accidentally walked in on Emma using the potty. She opened the bathroom door to find her beautiful and perfect granddaughter bent over the toilet with one arm completely inside the bowl, vigorously splashing the contents. Emma apparently looked at her and said brightly, “I’m cleaning the potty!”

Nana was so shocked that she didn’t say anything. Emma evidently saw the concern on Nana’s face. She followed up with, “It’s okay, I’m using a brush,” pulling her arm from the toilet and brandishing a dripping wet brush in her small hand.

It wasn’t actually a cleaning brush, but rather Nana’s hair brush.

The same hair brush Nana used on her head each and every day of her life after she bathed.

Each and every day – including the past several weeks that it had also been moonlighting as a toilet brush.