This afternoon, walking home with the girls after having picked Ems up from a friend's house, I encountered a family group - mom, baby in stroller, grandma, and three(?) year old, where the three year old was sitting on her potty, pants round her ankles, in the middle of the sidewalk. I don't know if the English are just more robust about these things than I am, or whether my children have been Big Kids for so many years that I've forgotten the nitty-gritty details of potty-training, but I found it rather off-putting.