I wasn't expectng that

Potty training has been going surprisingly well.  We've had very few accidents the past few days.  Actually, almost every time the girls need to go they tell us and head in to do their business.

There are some exceptions. 

This is the portable potty, which we discovered we need to take with us wherever we go as one of our darlings refuses to sit on the big girl potty.

Our innocent little ones seem to now have a strong grasp of what it means to stall.  At night, as they go to bed, they suddenly have the urge to potty. 

I lay them in their beds and as soon as I leave the room, I hear them calling

Papa!  I want to potty!

If I don't go in and let them try, they'll wet the bed, just to spite me.  If I do let them try, they'll sit on the potty for as long as I let them, smirking at me the whole time.  As soon as they say they are done, even though they haven't done anything, I'll put them back in bed, only to hear them once again say

Papa!  I want to potty!

Even if they just went potty, they'll exclaim their desire to go.

Last night was no exception. 

Twenty minutes into the process of trying to get them to go to sleep I had already taken them to the potty four times.  Neither of them had done anything, but why would they, they'd just peed minutes before bed.

Hadley was on the big girl potty while Brynne was on the portable one.  Neither of them doing anything other than sitting there, staying awake.

Then it happened.

We'd been having thunder and lightning for a few hours, and they don't get scared by it.  The brightest flash of lightning I have seen since I saw lightning hit a tree hundreds of yards in front of me a few years ago, lit up the entire world, or so it seemed.  Seconds later, thunder shook my insides. 

Almost immediately, two little girls were off their potties, scooting toward me as fast as they could with their underwear around their ankles.  I was equidistant from them as they started and they crashed into me at the exact same time. 

I was expecting shaking and crying, perhaps a desire to be held while the storm passed, but I was greeted instead by them both saying the exact same thing as I pulled up their drawers and scooped them up:

Papa, I need to go to bed now.

I took them into bed, laid them down, kissed them goodnight, walked out of the room, and they slept the rest of the night.

I'm seriously considering making a DVD of thunder and cranking the surround sound every night they fight going to bed.