My disgusting, awful, gross day-in-the-life nightmare

Add caption

Screams echo down the stairs with cries of
"it exploded" and "it's on his hands!!" added between breaths.
Right away I know who the "he" is.
It's #3, our resident 2 year old and king of all things rotten.
"He" is kindly escorted downstairs by a sour faced big sister who promptly let's me know
 "he poooooped!"
and oh boy did he ever
"I uh-splo-did" #3 grins with turd-bomb covered fingers
As I'm desperately trying to decide which surface in the nursery is easiest to disinfect, I also notice something else.
He's got it on his face
and his hands
and his legs
and his feet
and $&%* it's everywhere!!!

Now I'm just as good at keeping my calm as the next mom when it comes to the atrocities children excrete, but folks this was a whole new level of nightmare.

As I'm desperately scrubbing and pleading with him to "please start using the potty" I notice something else....this stuff isn't the same color.
The face mess is not the same as the stuff on his legs or feet?!
"did someone else poop on you??" I ask kind of hysterically
"eww no! Me eat choc-at, member?" giggles #3
Then I did.
 I remembered with blissful clarity that I had given them each a small handful of chocolate chips only a little bit ago.
Never in my life have I been so thankful for chocolate my friends. 



All images copyright: Amanda Abate

Kindred mom spirit aka proof I'm nuts

We braved the giant mega super center with all 4 kids a few weeks ago. It was crazy, hectic, and filled with embarrassing moments that no longer embarrass me. At the end of our shopping trip we pulled into a line with our mini van style buggy. You know the ones, giant contraptions with thick micro-ban  plastic seats, and the turning radius of a semi. All 4 kiddos were pilled high in the extra buggy. We always end up with for a "time-out" zone, that instead holds an open box of fruit loops and a few kids sitting atop bulk size toilet paper and paper towels.
 Yeah, we're classy like that.
So we're waiting for our turn when  I glance at the mom in front of us. She looks to be a few years ahead of me in mom years, with her oldest looking to be about 10.
 Seeing these amazing woman who have somehow survived toddlers and elementary school and are wearing real pants tend to give me a sense of hope and pride. Go moms!
 But this time my pride hit overload when I realized she was one of the very few who I can relate to on all levels. She had 4 kids!!
Now I know "bro-mance" is totally a thing, but I've never found a word for this. She was like, my kindred mom spirit?
It was like seeing myself in a few years. The baby of the family happily napping against a cute but not over trendy purse that mom actually uses! The oldest of the kids quietly helping load the groceries while the rest of the kids browse the candy isle without asking for even a piece!
I was in awe.
While we made polite chatter about the joy of shopping with 4 kids, and how we had both "been there" I realized, wow we could totally be friends. Like actually make a play date, and not worry about someone judging me for the cheese doodle in the couch cushion that the toddler tries to eat. No, this woman had been exactly where I am right now and SURVIVED.
I should have gave her my email and told her I would love to pick her brain on how she did the unimaginable.
But I didn't. I didn't want to be the weird, creepy woman from wally world who couldn't just join a mom group like everybody else. My husband and I watched them leave and laughed at how cool it was to meet someone else outside of the average 2.5 kids realm.

Thanks random mom for smiling and nodding when my toddler ate the box for the macaroni but not the noodles.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one who finds this normal.





What have your kids done to embarrass you in the store? Comment with your stories and I'll share one on the next blog!

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.