Things I never thought I would say....

Being a mother has certainly been more difficult than I thought. But, then again it hasn't been. I knew it was going to be hard. I expected to lose sleep and sanity and friends and "alone time" with my husband. What I didn't expect was the horribly odd and sometimes disgusting things my children would do. And my responses to such episodes.

Toddler has a dirty diaper. I lay him on the couch to clean him up.
 "Let me see my poopy", he says.
 "WHAT?"
"Let me look at my poopy balls"
my facial expression was response enough
( I did find out during another such instance that he did in-fact mean his balls of poop, not the other kind....)

Toddler says he's hungry for the 10,000 time that morning
"You need to eat until you are full this time." I say
said toddler turns to his big brother and licks him from chin to temple, turns to me and grins
"Ok me no hungry now"
??

Sometimes all I can do is shake my head and smile.
and remember not to take them in public.

Garlic powder, urine, and a dishwasher

My 2 year old is a mess....and I don't say that in the way well meaning grandmothers coo the expression at any child that happens to pull a bowl out of a cabinet and leave it in the floor. No, he is a gen-u-ine mess. This sweet, adorable, and cuddly child has decimated  entire homes without so much as a nap. Ok, not really but you get my point.

One day in early fall I had finally folded all of the laundry after a seemingly endless battle with a then newly crawling 8 month old who loved to "help". Since our two boys were upstairs I felt safe leaving her in the living room with a basket of socks as entertainment and running to the bathroom for the fastest tinkle in history.

WRONG! 

Wrong, wrong, wrong.......

I couldn't have been gone more than 45 seconds, maybe a minute. But it was enough. My 2 year old, who we'll call #3, had made it down stairs, and I had left the baby gate into the kitchen open. If you've ever spent time around a toddler you can understand the fear in this statement.

The afternoon sunshine spilled through my kitchen windows and fell in golden wonder onto the bare backside of #3. He stood, proud as a peacock, on my open dishwasher door. Naked.

Finding a bare bottomed toddler isn't an uncommon occurrence in our house and I even started to smile a little at the site of him. Until it hit me. Like a dump truck doing 55 down a hill. WHAM!
I was still 20 foot away from #3 and his nudist throne when I saw, or better yet could smell, the garlic. He had covered the inside of my dishwasher in garlic powder. "Ahhghghrh" was my half gagged response as I came closer to see just how bad the damage was. #3 grinned at me in his sweet blue eyed way, garlic powder still in hand and peed all over the inside of my freshly seasoned dishwasher.
Toddlers are fun.
So is washing dishes by hand.