More than a year into my potty training journey with my kids, I’ve arrived at two incontrovertible truths:

• The phrase I have to use the bathroom is contagious among preschoolers; and,
• There is nothing more interesting to the preschooler mind than underwear.

My daughter Bea has been potty trained for about a year now. I can’t take credit for it; she saw her little friends at daycare using the potty and it was game over for diapers. She was thrilled to be a big girl using the toilet, and since overcoming her fear of automatic-flushing toilets, has made it her mission to use every public toilet she comes across. (Coming soon to a blog near you: my definitive ranking of public bathrooms in Southern Ontario.)

This past Saturday, we took the kids to attend their cousin’s First Communion. Bea was thrilled because it was an opportunity to see her best-friend-and-cousin, Coco. They’re five months apart in age and adore each other, but my sister and her family live about an hour away by car, so the girls don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like. As soon as we arrived at church, Bea happily abandoned us and parked herself next to Coco in the pew.

I didn’t pay much attention to the girls for the first half of Mass. My youngest, Flo, was determined to practice walking up and down the side aisle of the church and I was dutifully following her and preventing her from lighting the place on fire with prayer candles. But as I walked toward the back of the church for the 67th time in 30 minutes, I spotted Bea and Coco waving at me from the front entrance where they were waiting in line for the bathroom.

It turns out Bea decided she needed to pee halfway through Mass and that her auntie was the only one who could take her to the bathroom. Hearing this, Coco decided she had to pee, too, so my sister got to lead the pee-schooler procession up the aisle to the bathroom at the back of the church.

Inside the bathroom, the task at hand was completely forgotten in the excitement of examining each other’s underwear. There was oohing and aahing. There were audible exclamations of how amazing the other party’s underpants were. There was a comparison of belly buttons. There was even an attempt to strip naked to show off said underwear even better, although my sister put a stop to that before the party really got started. (In case you were wondering, that one was Bea. It’s always Bea.)

After the girls finished their business (herded along by my sister, who was the only one in the room at all concerned with the line up outside the door), both girls informed me that they’d had a wonderful time using the bathroom together. In fact, Bea even mentioned it to me again that evening as I was tucking her into bed.

The following day, after my sister had relayed all of this information to me while laughing hysterically, she sent me a text message.

From Coco tonight: “My greatest adventure yesterday was going pee with Bea!”

Forget play-dates. I’ll be reaching out to my sister soon to schedule more pee-dates.