The messes they make

It must be a full moon because my children have gone completely insane in the past few days.

On Friday I was exceptionally busy with work and so I kind of let the children run wild for a bit while I was trying to get stuff done. It is awesome to work from home but the days the kids are out of school are a bit challenging.

Truth be told, I knew Z-man had the box of Cheerios and I clearly knew that he is a 2 year old boy, but I didn't know the damage that could be done with a box that was already 9/10 empty. It was keeping him quiet and I have a dust buster and 2 dogs so I figured it would be worth it for the free time I was getting in return. So I got busy with my work.

After a little while, I started hearing a crunching noise and then realized it had been 45 minutes since I had laid eyes on the little goof ball. I got very nervous -and for good reason. He had taken every single Cheerio out of the box and somehow must have figured out how to clone because there were waaaaay more Cheerios around my kitchen and dining room than were in that box, I swear. The pantry door that he has been trying master for the past few weeks was wide open too. Just my luck this was the exact time he figured out how to get in there.

When I found him he was rolling on the tile covered in the Bisquick flour that had turned our kitchen into a winter wonderland and my guy into a little snowman. The crunch crunch noise I was hearing was the dried pasta noodles he was happily munching on. They were strewn across a bed of shredded cheese. His sister, trying to be helpful when I asked her to grab him some cheese for a snack (I guess I should have clarified. I meant string cheese, the kind they both eat like 5 times per day) had handed him a full bag of shredded sharp cheddar. Nice.

You could have fed a small country with the amount of food on our floor and my little guy was quite pleased with himself. I was not.

It took two days, but I finally got the last glob of Bisquick cleaned out of my grout. Tip - don't put water on Bisquick when you are trying to get it off your floor because then you just have to clean up pancake batter. Start with a vacuum. Oh well, I will know that for next time - and let's be honest here there will be a next time.

Not to be outdone, it was my daughter's turn. On Sunday I was sitting on the couch working in my freshly cleaned house. Are you noticing a theme here? Obviously I need to quit my job so that my house can remain in some sort of presentable shape. My daughter comes and snuggles up next to me and says:

"Mommy! Mommy! I have a surprise for you!"

99.2% of the time, this is a good thing. Usually she has drawn me a nice picture or she has made up a song for me, etc. Excited about what sweet thing she has done to show me her love, I asked what it was.

"I took all of yours and daddy's socks and t-shirts out of your dresser drawers and dumped them on to the floor." Wow, wasn't expecting that one.

"Why exactly did you do that?" I asked the obvious question.

"Because I wanted to make a mess." We've taught her to be honest. I guess we've done a good job.

Oh well, I guess it could be worse, she could have dumped all of our clean clothes on the gooey glob of Bisquick.