Urine Trouble! (but not really...)

This is Cyrus.

Cyrus sleepwalks.

It is usually the urge to pee that pulls him out of his bed in a sleepy stupor. Most often he comes into our room lost and confused. He tries to climb into bed with us, but I have learned through trial and error (and bathroom floors covered in an insane amount of urine) to steer him in the direction of the bathroom. I have also learned through trial and error that it is in my best interest to accompany him to the bathroom, lift the toilet seat, help him...ahem...aim and shoot, flush the toilet, wash his hands, and guide him back to bed.

We don't normally worry about Cyrus and his sleepwalking tendencies because he has, for the most part, always come into our room and made us aware of the situation. His relatively consistent sleepwalking routine lulled us into a false sense of security.

That is, until the other night that Dave found him sleeping on the couch at midnight.

 He roused Cyrus and asked him what he was doing on the couch. Cyrus said, "I just fell asleep." Well, we know he didn't happen to "just" fall asleep seeing as how we tucked him into his bed safe and sound at 7:30 pm. Dave put him back in his bed, then he did a quick check for any pee puddles in the bathroom and called it good. He came in and told me what happened. We giggled, said goodnight and went to bed.

I honestly didn't give Cyrus' strange appearance on the couch another thought until later that day when I noticed a strange smell coming from the laundry room.

Our "laundry room" if you can call it that, is basically the hallway that leads into the garage with the washer and dryer shoved to the side. As we left in the morning to run errands and see friends my nose was assaulted by an offense smell. I looked around for a forgotten poopy diaper, or a rancid washcloth. I couldn't find anything so I thought maybe it was just me and we left.

The smell was still there when we got back.

Every time I went into the laundry room or passed by it I could smell something awful. Through years of experience and missed aiming in the bathroom I was able to identify the smell as urine, but I was still at a loss to find out where it was coming from. I looked in the corners, checked for dried puddles, no luck. It is not a very big room and the smell was getting stronger by the minute.

I started sniffing around and using my Super Mom sense of smell I found the area where the smell was the strongest....

the Shoe Box.

I moved some shoes around and gagged both from the smell and sight of a large puddle of urine that had accumulated at the bottom of the Box.

All I could do was laugh/gag. And I laughed HARD. I showed Cyrus the results of his sleepwalking escapade. Thinking he was in trouble he tried to pass the blame onto Carma. That made me laugh even harder as I pictured Carma popping a squat over the Shoe Box to relieve herself in the middle of the night. When he realized that I wasn't mad he started to relax and started to laugh at himself as well.

I then spent the next 45 minutes cleaning out the Box and washing shoes. I also had to spray everything with disinfecting/odor neutralizing spray because even after washing everything I COULD STILL SMELL THE PEE!

Life lesson(s) learned:
No more water for Cyrus at bed time.
Make sure he goes to the bathroom before bed.
Put a deadbolt on the laundry room door.