Manic Monday

Have you ever had one of those days where you just can't seem to catch up? It's almost a daily occurrence around our household, mainly because the kids are on to a new mess before we can pick up the old mess. Last Monday, however was a day when all the forces must have been against me. While I can't retell all that happened on that day, I can give a synopsis that ends with Matt arriving home and me saying to him, "the kids are in the bathroom; I'm going out to eat by myself" and walking out the door.

It started with us going to Hobby Lobby for a fun project. Despite the fact that it was like 10 degrees, Grayson chose to wear flip flops. The whole way to Hobby Lobby, I thought of excuses to give to the old ladies who would surely mention my inability to dress my children appropriately (I know they say it out of concern, but ugh it irks me, like when Matalley was crying because that's what 1 year olds do sometimes and someone said, "looks like someone needs a nap" after she has just had one.). We get to the store and G finds a leaf remnant from a fake flower. He thinks it's the best toy he's ever seen and proceeds to fly it around the store proudly proclaiming it is a pterodactyl (like we needed anymore attention drawn to us). He weaves in and out of folks and I just apologize. If they would put in some larger carts, I might be able to fit him inside one and eliminate the hassle of screaming at him to stay by me. As we're checking out, he spins until he's dizzy and falls down. So now he's rolling around on the floor near the registers (really I should have just cut my losses and left, but we were so close) and I say to him, "Grayson, do you have any idea what is on the floor?" Side-note, it's the Monday after Thanksgiving so people are going nuts with the decorations...lines out the wazoo. He replies, matter of fact, within ear shot of ALL the people waiting in line , "poop." You may recall from another story that I say there is poop on the floor to keep the kids inhaling floor ridden puffs...it's just what I say; people walk in poop and then walk into Hobby Lobby...everyone knows that!

Baring any more embarrassment, we are able to leave the store with whatever remains of my dignity. We get home and I begin to hang some ornaments on our chandelier in the dining room. One ornament fell and broke so I grabbed the vacuum cleaner. Grayson thinks vacuuming is pretty cool so I let him vacuum the rest of the kitchen and Matalley got the play vacuum out. Everyone was humming a little happy tune.

At one point, Grayson was near the dog bowls. He gasped and I looked over at him. He had one of those uh-oh looks and was looking in the vacuum. I asked him what happened and he said "nothing" and went about his business. I assumed that he vacuumed up some dog food. When we'd finished in there, we went out to the living room to vacuum up some pine needles. The tree is on top of the train table (we have space issues) and the kids have been forbidden to play with the drawers underneath...they forgot and hence we had pine needles around the table. I started to vacuum and it was making a weird noise. I look in the canister and see a BIG bow/ribbon that G vacuumed up. Frustrated, I explained that if you can pick something up with your hands and throw it away, you can't vacuum it up or it could break the vacuum cleaner. Then I reached in to get it out and it was soaking. "Did you vacuum up water Grayson?" Yes, he did...the dog bowl water!! So now the vacuum is broken and so I wind up the cord to let the vacuum rest, praying that us vacuuming after it was waterlogged didn't ruin it for good. As I'm doing that, Grayson thinks it would be fun to grab a tube of "make your own snow." It's basically like glitter that you add water to and it grows into fake snow...some neat science project Santa brilliantly thought to give G last year. G opens it, unbeknown to me, and poof, snow glitter is everywhere.

EVERYWHERE!

And the vacuum is broken.

So, thinking that surely if I send the kids to Matalley's room to play with the kitchen, I can pick up the mess without anything else going wrong, blindly send them away. While dusting and sweeping, I hear the kids open the door and cut into the bathroom quickly shutting the door behind them. I get that 'uh-oh, please no' panic feeling after a few minutes and head to the door. I walk in to find water everywhere...Grayson has been throwing buckets onto Matalley because they got into some lotion (yes, I foolishly believed that one lotion mess had taught the kids a lesson and stupidly left a new bottle in the same spot) and dumped way to much out so they needed water to wash it off. There was seriously, water everywhere. I have one of those reed diffusers with smelly stuff in a bottle and Grayson has dumped that out (yes, it is toxic to skin) and is using it to fill the vase of plastic flowers I have sitting on the counter. I ask them to please get some towels to pick up the water that they could probably wade through, while I go get a laundry basket. I come back to find ALL of the rags from the closet(like 50 gazillion when truly we only needed like 4) on the floor and there is still water everywhere.

And it was at this point that I realized all hope for sanity is gone. I am destined to live in a messy, loud, crazy household...I'm outnumbered when Matt is gone and for some reason my battle cry is useless. That's about when Matt showed up. I left, got to the restaurant and realized that my wallet was at home. As Grayson says, "so, so, so, so, so, so sad for me."