…holding your baby down at the doctor’s office so the nurse can administer her vaccinations, while your four year old (with impeccable timing) vomits on the floor behind you.

A haiku (about last night)

Sick am I, this night
puked my dinner, got the chills
toothpaste everywhere

If you don’t understand the bit about the toothpaste, clearly you don’t understand what a destructive child Sugar is.  While in my ill stupor I called Charming urging him to come home before the children destroyed everything.  Not five minutes after I said that, the two year old had spread toothpaste all over the bathroom cupboards. 

Yes, so I got the flu or food posioning or something.  Feeling mildly better today. 

I was reading stories to Sugar today and Spider found this hilarious.  I can’t remember my other children busting up like that at her age.  She was just laughing, and laughing and laughing.  I wasn’t doing anything special.  Just reading books like I usually do, and she thought I was really funny, apparently.  For those of you who know me, do you think I have an amusing speaking voice?

Anyway.  That was fun.  What was not fun (for me anyway) was dinnertime this night.  Engineer and Sugar thought it would be a good idea to squish their peas all over the place.  Engineer was keeping them on his plate, so he got to keep his food.  Sugar was squashing them all over the table, so she was finished.   I took Spider to change her diaper and the next thing I know, Engineer is taking peas off of his plate, putting them on the floor and stomping on them!  I was a little annoyed with this.  I made him clean them up.

Then at bathtime, Sugar decided it would be a good idea to put her wet diaper and panties into the toilet.  How fast can you dash to yank something from the john before it goes swirling down?  Probably faster than you think.  I got those babies just before they caused plumbing issues.

Yes, it’s been one of those days.

It usually is. 

F Minus is my new favorite comic strip.  I thought this was hilarious, maybe you will, maybe you won’t.  Maybe I just have an odd sense of humor.

I was thinking today about a woman I knew when Charming and I were first married.  She was this amazing person who was nice, friendly, always helping and serving other people and she still managed to teach part time and take care of three sons each 20 months apart, the oldest being about 4 years old.

I remember going to her house one day to drop off some diapers for a needy family in our neighborhood.  I walked in and was shocked.  Her house was a mess!  There were toys everywhere, a dirty diaper on the floor and her husband and sons were just watching cartoons.  I thought it was weird (not that my house was super clean, even though I just had one infant at the time) and a little gross.

I thought of her today as I picked up old diapers off my bedroom floor and cleaned up other messiness.  My children and husband are often in front of the tube in a house full of chaos.  Cleanliness is not always everpresent here…

The point?  The lessons learned?

1. Don’t judge.  Whenever you judge another person’s mothering or homemaking skills, you will find yourself someday with the same problem.  (I also remember mentally criticizing a woman for her lack of ability to control her son’s biting and I later had a biter on my own hands…)

2. Don’t worry about what people think of your messy house.  If they think it’s gross or nasty, then they just haven’t been there yet.  They will my firend, oh how they will. And then they will be posting on their blogs about how awesome you were and yet how messy… well you get it.