Toilets, Pre-schoolers and birthdays, oh my!

Yesterday started off like any other day. Got to work at the preschool, business as usual.
Around lunch time, one of the teachers who had been sick for the past week went home to get some rest, so it was myself and a sub, who has just recently started working full time on Thursdays, with fifteen preschoolers. No big deal.

We got through lunch time, cleaned up the tables and floors and were just finishing up the potty trips before settling the kids down for nap. I ran into the teacher bathroom before heading off on my lunch break and leaving the other teacher alone for an hour. To my dismay, I heard one of the boys say "the toilet's leaking".

"Darn it!" I thought. The toilet must be overflowing. I went out and checked the bathroom. Water all over the floor, toilet full to the seat. I asked the other teacher if the water was from the toilet...trying to rule out that it wasn't just from someone playing in the sink and did, in fact, need to be cleaned up and the floor disinfected. She said it was. I asked if she had turned off the water. She said she didn't know how.

May I just take this side note to ask..."How does someone with three teen-age children not know how to turn the water off on a toilet???!!!!" (For those of you reading this who don't know how to do it...learn! You turn the little knob under the toilet "righty-tighty" as far as it will go.)

I proceeded to turn the water off and check the other two toilets. Each filled up with water as I flushed and very quickly got their water shut off as well. Knowing that all three toilets were connected by piping, and that we had an hour before all fifteen preschoolers were up and going, I hurried and got the plunger.

After about ten minutes and no success, I called our teacher at home to find out our regular plumber's name and gave them a call, only to find out they had a number of emergencies and couldn't come out at all. I talked to a couple people, trying to explain that, legally, we can't have non-flushing toilets and children using them. We could get by for maybe an hour at most, since some of the water had drained out of the toilets (but whenever I tried flushing them again, they just filled back up).

We finally located a plumber that could send someone out right away, but they were an hour away. By the time everything got situated, the plumbers called and on the way, and the bathrooms mostly cleaned up, I remembered we were celebrating someone's 5th birthday that afternoon and that her mom would be in at 2:45pm with cupcakes.

Any way I figured it, I knew that I couldn't take my whole hour long lunch break and our other teacher take her whole lunch break or we would be in trouble when the mom came for the birthday, because the other teacher would still be gone and I can only legally be alone with twelve children. So, I took a very quick half hour lunch and came back to let the other teacher do the same.

In the half hour I had been gone, almost all of the kids had gotten up to use the bathroom a second time since lunch. Great. Still no plumber. The other teacher left. I started setting up part of the room and then realized, fairly quickly, that if I didn't start having kids get up and clean up their beds, no one would be ready for the party. Let the chaos begin!

At 2:40pm, in walked mom with the cupcakes. At 2:45pm, the time the party was supposed to start, I realized the other teacher wasn't back yet and completely forgot that we needed to have a healthy snack before the cupcakes. By 2:50pm, the birthday mom was helping me put out a healthy snack to get ready. At 2:52pm, in walked the first plumber we called, who wasn't supposed to be able to come. Um....

I walked over, a little suprised and tried to assess what he was doing there. He said he had gotten word about our situation, didn't know what his office had for him to do next, but wanted to run by and take a look. Knowing the other plumber was close to arriving and had at least an hour drive to get there and being minutes away from a birthday party and on the edge of being not legal as far as our teacher to child ratio, my mind was in a panic!

I ran back to the office to talk to the reverend that oversees our preschool and quickly told her about the plumber situation, handing it off to her. I ran back out to the kids and got them washing hands, before the plumber got into the bathrooms, so they could start snack and get the birthday underway. Three minutes later the other teacher came back...whew! I filled her in on the situation, as the reverend and plumber went into the bathroom area to talk. Two minutes later, the second plumber walked in the door and was met by the other teacher. She tactfully asked him to wait just a second while she told the reverend and first plumber of his arrival. The first plumber graciously told the second that he was just on his way out, but filled him in on the details. Whew! Uncomfortable crisis averted.

We sang happy birthday, gave the kids cupcakes, the plumbers left and I got to have a yummy chocolate cupcake!

Then the reverend came out and said the toilets were working. "Oh good, they're fixed!" I said.
"No, they were working." she said
"What?" I said
"They flushed just fine." she said "And the second plumber is just charging for his trip."

Ugh!!!!!!!!!

Apparently, after all that, in the hour it took for anyone to come out and look at the toilets, they somehow cleared themselves out...probably desolving the half a roll of toilet paper I am sure one of the kids tried to flush down the toilet.

15 preschoolers, 3 clogged toilets and a five-year old birthday party later, I was exhausted!