Happy Birthday! Love, Gabe and Mr. Plumber

Photo courtesy of fkclinic.blogspot.com

Here is a story I must share! My son was almost two at the time. It was almost Thanksgiving and we were living in a rental home during the time this story took place.

My dad had just left to go home after visiting for my birthday. My dad had given me the most generous birthday gift ever. He gave me $400. Yep, you are reading that right.

Not $4, not $40, but $400. Little did I know I would not see a dime of that $400.

I was in the bathroom cleaning up after his visit and preparing for Thanksgiving company. My son was standing on the toilet smearing shaving cream on the mirror and making designs. One of his favorite things to do at that age. This went on for a half an hour or so until it was time to clean the mirror. I took Gabe off the toilet and he moved on to play with toys on the floor next to the bath tub. He was really doing a fabulous job of entertaining himself. Ten more minutes pass and finally, the bathroom is clean.

We are done with that chore and move on to go play in the living room.

Over the next few days we are having issues getting the toilet to flush. What in the world could it be? I just cleaned in there and the toilet was working just fine. We try plunging it and it seemed to help a little but not completely clearing up the problem. We decided to wait over the next day to see if whatever is blocking it passes. Plumbers are not exactly cheap.

No luck. We were to the point of having to plunge it after every use and if we flush it again we are going to be swimming in poop. My husband went out and got some tools to see if he could unclog it but after scratching up the porcelain and having no success we had to break down and call a plumber.

The plumber had to remove the whole toilet to find what was clogging it. Thankfully he was nice because he charged us $452.32. Now you know where my birthday money went and why I never saw a dime of it.

So... what was clogging the toilet? A large plastic pack of dental floss that my son willingly fessed up to dropping or putting into the toilet and flushing down. I could not just flush away $452.32. I washed off the dental floss pack an broke it apart so I had just the front flat surface. I printed on the computer a picture of a price tag. Then I hand wrote $452.32 and I framed it and hung it in his room.

Happy Birthday Mommy! Love, Gabriel Preston