Getting Rid of Toys

Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to get rid of a child's toy? I'm sure I'm not the only one who has hidden a toy at the bottom of the trash can or been sneaky in arranging the goodwill piles.

Well we have a few bath toys that are in serious need of a visit to the dumpster. The floating boats have been around for about 4 years or so. Anyway, I've been putting them in the trash can and slowly they have been disappearing, but Amy is really good at fishing them out. However, I finally got rid of one of them and it only cost me $75 and over 3 hours of a plumber's time.

The offending toy's look a like...

So, here is the story. Last Monday night we had 3 other families over for Family Home Evening to celebrate the boys' birthdays. It was a bit chaotic as birthday parties go. We had 14 kids under 8 years old! We enjoyed cake, a pinata, and presents. After the adventure was over and the kids were in bed, I was walking by the kids' bathroom and it just smelled wrong. I figured that one of the kids used the facility without flushing it down. That lack of action seems to be a pretty common occurrence with the 3 to 5 year old crowd. I flushed the toilet and then opened the lid (I know this is backward, but it was late and I was tired) just in time to see a little toy boat float down the toilet. There was plenty of other "stuff" floating too, but I still attempted to catch the boat. I wasn't fast enough.

I thought, "well maybe it floated out." The next morning Eric informed me that when he pooped the water came up instead of going down. Out comes the plunger! I was wishfully thinking that perhaps Eric used too much toilet paper and that was the problem, but when I helped Ian go to the bathroom later in the day and it still overflowed I knew that the amount of toilet paper wasn't the problem. It was the boat. Out came the plunger again!

I called a plumber who said they could come first thing the next morning. I locked the bathroom door in attempts to get all the kids to use my toilet instead. Then Wednesday morning 2 plumbers show up and try to snake the toilet. When that didn't work, they had to pull the toilet and and try some more. After about an hour of shoving their snake tool through the toilet they pulled out the top half of the boat. I told them yes, that was half of the toy. They went back to work and I went back to trying to keep the kids away from the excitement in the bathroom...seriously this was a full time job! Another 30 to 45 minutes went by and the guys said, "ok we got it." Good! We now have 2 working toilets. I thanked them and got my kids to preschool and all the normal daily errands done.

The next morning Eric tells me the water in the toilet is still rising. What? Didn't I just spend $75 to get that fixed? So, I'm hoping that again it is Eric's over use of toilet paper. The kid will use like 20 squares per wipe which is really excessive. However the overflow pattern continued through the rest of the morning. More plunger duty! I called the plumbing company back and told them that the toilet was still backing up.

About 4:30 that afternoon they show back up and take the toilet off again. Only this time I have all four kids home and all four kids awake. It is really difficult to keep them out of the bathroom and out of the way. It took the new guy about 10 minutes to find the yellow boat. It was turned perpendicular to the hole's opening. He looked at it and said, "I don't know if I'll be able to get that out." It took him another hour and a half to pull the toy out, finally. Poor guy listened to about a hundred kids questions, despite my best effort, that sounded a lot like this, "how much longer are you going to be here?"

He was rewarded for all of his efforts when he was leaving and Tara handed him a Now N Later and said, "thanks for fixing our toilet."

Anyway, as a quick side note. Ian now thinks we have to use the plunger everytime we flush the toilet!!