Bladder control actually IS all its cracked up to be.

If day #1 was nightmare, and day #2 was recovery, then day #3 was urine.

Incident one: London pees her pants just before bedtime. In her car seat. Any parent can relate to this feeling of "if you have to pee/poop/vomit, I'd seriously rather you do it in my hair than on your car seat." It is a huge pain any time, but to deal with a peed car seat on a road trip was enough to make us briefly consider blowing up the car.

Incident #2 started around 2:30am when my motherly instincts woke me up with an overwhelming need to cover anyone who seemed chilly, uncover anyone who had a sweat-soaked head, and pull anyone back who may have slid off their sleeping bag into no-man's land. (Feel free to be impressed with my motherly instincts, I certainly was.)

Until I realized that my motherly instincts failed to remind me to put a pull-up on Harper. (I know this is where half of you stop being impressed and start judging me for having a four year old still in pull-ups, I will thank you very kindly to shut up. Unless you have a really good trick for bed-wetting boys.)

So, here was Harper, out cold, just marinating in his sleep bag.

As one could probably imagine, it was not easy to clean him, the tent, his camping pad, and his sheets and sleeping bag - in the middle of the night, outside, with no washing machine. A stay a local Ho-Jo never sounded so good.

We cleaned everything up, except all the laundry which we ended up bringing to a 24 hour wash-n-fold in the morning. People do your laundry for 89 cents a pound! It was pretty cheap!! If there hadn't been 8 pounds of urine in his 3 pound sleeping bag, it would have been a total steal.

We got our famous crab cakes, then spent all day at the aquarium. It was a great day... So much for the kids to see, so much air conditioning. It was a beautiful thing. Then incident #3.

London brought it home with one more undie-soak. This led to me speed-washing her underpants in the bathroom sink before anyone could come in and report me to the aquarium sanitation police. I was not quick enough apparently, and nobody seemed to appreciate the sight of a woman using the public hand dryer to dry some drawers. Like they've never done it. Psh.

Now in London's sweet baby defense she is just now two and a half, so this is totally age appropriate (and so was baby Huey's sleeping bag fiasco, by the way, you can ask any pediatrician.)

Just before our trip London told me she had to go potty "willy willy bad" and when I told her she needed to hold it, she grabbed herself and yelled "I'm holding it! But if I let go can my undies hold it?" Clearly we still have some ground to cover with her, so I should have seen this coming.

Overall though, It was a really great day, and the kids had so much fun at the aquarium. And when you are surrounded by that much water, honestly who WOULDN't pee themselves? I know Tom considered it on several different occasions.

Tomorrow is Washington D.C. and the kids have very high hopes from our Nation's Capitol. Since nobody in D.C. has ever let anyone down, I see no reason why we shouldn't be feeling pretty good on this side of it. I plan to keep fresh underpants of all sizes in a holster tomorrow, ready to pull out the moment anyone gets the teensiest bit excited.

*a note to ATTAT fans, tomorrow I will be conducting an intensive interview with Tom himself. You can expect lots of exciting things from this full-length feature, including his reactions to all the events that have transpired, and what one creature in the aquarium genuinely terrified him to the point that he said an interaction with said creature would "make him cry." Stay tuned to hear that, and more, tomorrow on All Tom, All the Time.