It’s after breakfast and I’ve herded the girls upstairs for their morning toilette. They race each other upstairs, while I collect the toys, slippers, pajama tops and bottoms and other flotsam and jetsam they jettison from themselves as they hit the bathroom. Seriously, random pieces of crayons, stickers, and Cheerios follow in my children’s wake like dust clouds around Pigpen.

In the bathroom, the girls have successfully relieved themselves without any assistance from me, which is a nice surprise. Co, naked from the waist down, is reaching up to re-hang the hand towel on the rack, one foot precariously perched on her potty chair, the other on the floor. Mo flushes the toilet and begins to dance a little jig while singing, “We went potty, we went potty!”

Applauding, I come into the bathroom to put toothpaste on their toothbrushes and to saturate washcloths. I wash my hands and grab the hand towel that Co has abandoned to the floor and begin to dry my hands.

“I wouldn’t use that if I were you,” says Morgan eyeing me warily.

“Why not?” I say, hanging up the towel and turning to inspect my face in the bathroom mirror.

“Coever used it to wipe her buns.”