Hi everyone, I've installed several Toto toilets, use them exclusively in my home and would like to offer some advice that'll address the two core complaints mentioned in this thread: the dripping sound and the flush problems. 1) The dripping sound is due to the Toto's proprietary roughin adapter and how it mates to the floor's flange. One trick I've found is to use a hot-glue gun and glue a zip-tie to the toilet's exit port so any trickling water is gracefully conducted down the zip-tie and onto the adapter. You must be sure the zip-tie is secured onto the 'front' portion of the exit hole and extends 2 inches or so beyond the hole or it won't work. 2) Toto is famous for their flushing. They use a superior 'swiggle' in the exit tube to improve the vacuum. The ONLY cause for a poorly flushing Toto is a flawed installation of the 'waxie'. The 'waxie' is the wax seal used where the adapter mates to the floor flange. If it's moved, even slightly during installation (or even during the toilet's use if the floor bolts are not secure and the toilet slightly rocks), the waxie develops pin-holes that breaks the seal (and thus the vacuum). So, if you don't experience an impressive sucking effect each time you flush, it's the seal. Just replace it. I hope this helps everyone to solve the distracting dripping sound common to Toto toilets, and explains the mystery of why some people love the flushing action of their Toto toilet, while others are forced to use a plunger.

This may sound strange, but have you considered any grays? When we moved into our house, two rooms on the second floor were painted gray--one a very crisp pale gray, and the other a little more taupe-y gray. I assumed we'd dislike the gray and paint over it...but my (now) 5-yr-old son has the crisp gray room, and our playroom is in the taupe-gray room. Gray seems to really bring out primary-little kid colors. And gray is great because your child won't outgrow it quickly, and you can change the color scheme easily. My ds's room has a blue-red scheme with a little lime green accent, and the playroom has blue and green furniture/storage, with a bright multicolored rug. These are my favorite rooms in the house. Sorry I don't have a specific gray to recommend, since the rooms were already painted when we moved in. Having said that, I will also say that we have a bathroom that is Polar Sky, and it's a very nice color, very clean and cheerful, with no odd undertones. I think it would be a nice color for a toddler's room.

My son's room when he was a toddler also had a chair rail. We painted the bottom a medium mossy green and the top of the wall a pale sky blue. The chair rail was painted the green color as well. Using the chair rail as a kind of border, I stenciled ferns, ladybugs, lizards, snakes, butterflies, etc. to evoke a rainforest. It was very sweet and easily done. And of course stencils are so easy to paint over when they grow up. It was great for him because he loved rainforests. I agree with the above post -tailor it toward your son's interests.

Hey Love! It's good to hear from you and I'm really happy that overall things have been going so well. You must have been working very hard to get to the 95% disengaged and that is just great news. UGH to the storms. SS is terrified of tornadoes too, and they are not that much of a threat here because of the terrain. (We do have them, but they generally only hit four or five houses at a time, hop back up into the clouds, back down again - not like the areas where they leave a path of destruction for a mile.) We had one here about a month ago; I set SS a task of calming and explaining to one of the pets what was going on (pets all being in the cellar with us). So SS (as I'd hoped) told the pet all of the stuff I've told him - even if funnel cloud comes down it doesn't mean it's going to hit our house, even if it does it's likely to just take off roof or something and we'll fix it, even if it destroys most of the house we'll be safe in the cellar and we have insurance for everything else. It really seemed to help calm him - the more he repeated it to the pet the more he seemed to believe it himself. (We were fine- we had hail larger than golf balls so I was a bit concerned myself that time!) I think some parents do that because they don't have any friends. If I heard a scary noise, if I were hiding in the cellar because of a tornado warning, I'd call or text a friend for encouragement - not a kid! Great, kid can worry about me, but I'd prefer an adult who can see on the news that tornado hit my area and if I don't answer, can drive over to check on me. Does DH get along well with the teacher? Maybe they can both tag-team BM - teacher can tell BM that she's really hoping to be able to talk reason to her since DH doesn't seem to "get it", how important summer school is for SS, how teacher is optimistic that the child's mother (unlike his father) can understand that.....if BM thinks she's putting something over on DH she'll do it in a heartbeat. :-)