by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Last night I dressed my 10-month-old in Star Wars pajamas and set him in a little kid chair, and I snapped a picture of him, because he was so happy and it was so stinking cute. And then I posted the picture on my social media sites today, because, like I said, it was cute, and everybody loves cute photos of babies,and sometimes all we need to feel like we’re on top of a Monday is to see the smiling face of a happy baby. But all was not as it should have been.
I did not check the picture for surprise appendages. Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten so used to ignoring the naked parts that go flying around my house. I live with a tribe of boys, after all, who would, hands down, prefer no clothes to clothes any hour of any day. After so much of all that nakedness, you just become immune to it.
Another boy mom noticed and sent me a message saying I had an unintended addition in the corner of the picture. So I took it down, cropped it and put it back up. Because it really was a great picture.
(This is the cropped version. See? Doesn’t that just make you want to smile?)
It probably goes without saying that I cannot “just snap” a picture in my home, because there is always a little boy running straight out of the bathroom without the pants he had on two seconds ago. I can’t “just take” a quick video of my boys dancing to “Whip It Nae Nae,” because one of them will get too hot and strip down to nothing but his birthday suit. I can’t just open the door to see who rang the bell, because it’s guaranteed that someone will peek around the corner, even though I told him to stay in his seat, showing more parts than he should.
Lately we’ve been the hub of the neighborhood. Kids just like to come to our house, because we’re super cool parents. Actually, it’s more likely because we have a trampoline in our backyard and a swing set and we let the kids be unless someone is dying. But this becoming a hub also means that at all hours of the day we have kids knocking on our door, asking to play.
On Saturday, I opened the door to find a little curly-haired girl. “I came over to play,” she said, walking right in before I could stop her. Problem is, we’d just gotten up, and when boys have just gotten up, there’s no guarantee that they are dressed in anything at all, because there is some sort of clothes bandit that keeps stealing into our house and stealing out of it with the pajamas they were wearing when we kissed them goodnight. I couldn’t be sure what exactly the situation was as I peered from the living room into the kitchen, because they were all wrapped in their blankets, since it was a cold morning. But then the 9-year-old stood up to go to the bathroom, dropping the wrapped-around-him blanket, and all he had on was fluorescent green boxers. At least he had something on, I guess.
But that little girl saw more than she probably should have. (Well. You probably shouldn’t ring our doorbell at 7 a.m. on a Saturday. So. Lesson learned. Hopefully.)
Will I ever get to a place where I can “just snap” a picture or “just take a quick video” and “just answer the door?” I don’t know. I do know that I have had to put some rules in place that I never, ever thought I would have to put in place back before I became a boy mom.
They sound a little like this:
Anyone who doesn’t at least have underwear at the table doesn’t get any food.
No, you may not got outside in your underwear (even in the fenced backyard).
Do not dance naked through the living room.
Because, you know, sometimes people knock on the door, and they don’t want to see your pride and joy. And sometimes people are out mowing their lawn while you’re jumping on the trampoline in your Captain America butt huggers, and they don’t want to see an accidental slip. And sometimes we forget to close the blinds, and people don’t want to see a streaker when they’ve only just woken up.
And, more importantly, sometimes Mama just wants to take a picture. For the love, go put on some underpants.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
It’s not just that this bathroom smells like a swamp. It’s also that there is always mud in the sink, from boys playing out back in the pit I told them to “not get in or else,” and, of course, they thought they’d try their hand at the “or else,” because mud and boys and fun, and then coming in to wash their hands (if they bother at all). It’s also that there are soggy toilet paper rolls in the trash can, because one of the 3-year-olds decided it would be funny to put one in the sink and turn on the water and watch it “turn curly.” (At least this is what we hope he did. Nothing has been confirmed, because when you ask a 3-year-old “What happened?” you’re likely to hear all about a roly poly out in the backyard that they put into the cracks between the porch rails and how they fell on their booty but it didn’t hurt and then they ate some popcorn that you know you didn’t make today but they probably found tucked into the couch from the last movie night three weeks ago. But, all things considered, I’d rather assume it’s not potty water that soaked the toilet paper roll and the floor and mostly his white monster shirt that he refused to take off because “I LOVE THIS MONSTER AND HE NEEDS ME TO WEAR HIM AND HE’S MY FRIEND AND I DON’T CARE IF MY SHIRT IS WET.” I didn’t feel like arguing for 36 hours, so I let it be.)
It’s also that there are these gigantic spit balls leering at me from the ceiling every time I dare to think I might use this bathroom instead of making the long trip upstairs to my no-boys-allowed one.
This bathroom is the guest bathroom. I am always, ALWAYS embarrassed when someone’s over and they say, “I’ll be right back” and I see them heading for it. I always want to give a disclaimer or some kind of warning that will encompass everything that has happened in this bathroom. It doesn’t matter how many times Husband cleans it (because I have a sensitive gag reflex). It doesn’t matter how recently that cleaning happened. It doesn’t matter if none of the boys have even used it since that cleaning. They have left their marks everywhere. Most notably, now, the ceiling.
We’re not really sure which one did this little prank. We’re only sure that it’s been there for three weeks now, because Husband and I are just.too.tired to try to scrape giant spit balls off the ceiling.
I’m sure it was so much fun. I imagine one of them closing and locking themselves into this bathroom under the guise of needing to “go number two,” because they knew it would buy them some time. And it probably wasn’t even premeditated. They were probably washing their hands and looked over at the perfectly fine toilet paper roll hanging beside the toilet and then the other used-to-be-perfectly-fine-but-is-now-soggy toilet paper roll dripping in the trash can and then, innocently enough, looked up at the ceiling. Then back at the soggy roll and back at the ceiling and back again. It was such a perfectly white, untouched space. I imagine he tore off a small piece of that soggy toilet paper and tossed it up with all the force his little 5-year-old body could muster, just to see if it would stick. And it did. And then he realized it worked, and this would be a REALLY fun game, and he waved his older brothers in and they all started playing this fun game called “How Big a Spitball Can We Make Stick to the Ceiling.”
And before we even knew what was happening, we had a ceiling full of gigantic spit balls.
I remember the lure of this game when I was a kid. My brother would put bigger and bigger wads of wet paper into a straw and launch it toward the ceiling. Boys at school would do it while the teacher’s back was turned, and the boys with the biggest wads that stuck AND went unnoticed by the teacher got the most points. I never did understand its entertainment. It just made me shudder a little, walking under all that spit. Maybe that was the point.
My brother and the boys at school never got such an impressive wad of toilet paper to stick to a ceiling, which has me looking for the biggest spit ball record in the Guinness Book of World Records. I’m pretty sure my kids are close.
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test featured, Messy Mondays
It used to be so easy. It used to be that when we put something away, it stayed put away. It used to be that I could control the crawling space where my kid would scrutinize every piece of lint or dirt or dropped food, and there was nothing because HE WAS THE ONLY ONE.
Now, when I get down on my knees to do girly pushups and stand back up, there’s all kinds of crap stuck to my skin. Popcorn kernels. Tiny pieces of confetti-like paper. Mostly hair. It doesn’t matter if I just vacuumed 10 seconds ago, I will never be disappointed by the grossness that sticks to the sweat on my kneecaps. Someone in my house sheds like a German Shepherd, and it’s probably me.
And it’s not just those things that are burrowing down into the carpet that resurface when I decide to make an effort and work out (beyond chasing kids, of course), but it’s also the things my kids leave on the floor. When there was only one kid, we were able to manage this. When he took off his jacket, we could help him hang it up where it went. When he decided he didn’t want to wear socks with his tennis shoes, we could make sure those smelly socks got in the hamper. When he wanted to draw a picture of a flying elephant, he put the supplies away.
The problem is, now there are five little boys tearing off their socks and digging things out and forgetting they ever knew how to put things away. And shedding. Apparently.
The other problem is, Littlest One is crawling. That means when he finds dirty, smelly socks on the floor, they go in his mouth. When he finds important school papers spread on the floor, they go in his mouth. When he finds balls of hair they go, you guessed it, in his mouth. Which means we vacuum pretty much every day. Which is probably what we should have been doing in the first place, but who wants to clean a house where seven males live? Not me.
As you can probably imagine, vacuuming every day does not take care of this problem completely. Vacuums don’t suck up things like the insides of a stuffed animal the 3-year-olds thought it would be funny to de-fluff. It doesn’t get rid of dirty underwear no one claims. It doesn’t get rid of colored pencils.
What typically happens when you have more than one kid is that the 3-year-old will decide he wants to color, so he’ll get out the crayons and the colored pencils and his coloring book, because of course you keep all of that where he can reach it easily, because art expression is important in your house, and it’s a better alternative to butter-knife sword fighting with his imaginary friend, which has often been his preference but is definitely not allowed in your house, and then when he’s finished coloring 30 seconds later because he has the attention span of a squirrel, he goes straight for the trains even though the rule in your house is “one thing out at a time.” So then you have The Cleanup Fight, which usually just means a 3-year-old angrily swiping everything that was previously on the table onto the floor, screaming that he is “NOT GOING TO CLEAN THEM UP AND YOU’RE A MEAN BOOTY-FACE” and then collapsing into a pile of noodles right beside the tantrum mess, hopefully scraping his back on one of those colored pencils, so you can bring the point home that “that’s what happens when you.” And then he’ll say he didn’t get them out and he never colored with him, “nuh-uh,” he didn’t, and while you’re reminding him that you were just beside him while he did exactly what he’s saying he didn’t, because you’ll argue to the death with a 3-year-old, the Littlest One will pick up one of those pencils, slobber on it and then try to get it in his mouth. And because his aim isn’t all that great yet, he’ll end up with a mural all over his face.
He was super happy about his first taste of art. And by first taste of art, I mean his first literal taste of art.
I cleaned him off and turned my attention back to the 3-year-old, who was still lifeless on the floor, pretending like he was “too tired to clean up but not tired enough to lie down for his nap early.” The 9-month-old promptly zeroed in on an old diaper that had been left by Husband on the floor.
The moral of that story is: It’s not just kids that complicate things. It’s also husbands.
The other moral of the story is: Clean up your 3-year-old’s messes.
Not really. Because if you do it for them, how will they ever learn to clean up for themselves? And you’re not doing the world any favors sending a kid who doesn’t know how to clean up out into real life, because he’ll never learn it if not here in your home, and if you’re too lazy to teach them something as simple as cleaning up even when they don’t feel like it, then you shouldn’t have had kids.
Or something ridiculous like that.
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test Parents, Messy Mondays
I know, I know. They’re so cute and cuddly. The first time they smile and the first time they say your name and the first time they reach toward you and you know you’re surely and certainly loved, even without words, those are the best moments of life. The best moments of baby.
It’s just that I feel like it’s my duty to warn you: THERE ARE A LOT OF OTHER MOMENTS WITH BABY, TOO.
Take the picture above. That happened a few weeks ago, right after I dropped my older boys off at school the one morning Baby happened to be in a stroller instead of strapped to me with a Baby Bjorn (and thank God for that, because…). I know we could all say I dodged a bullet with that one, because at least all that didn’t land on me, but what you can’t accurately see from this picture is HOW MUCH PUKE THERE IS. And how many crevices an infant seat has. And how much of it ended up on my hands.
After I thought fast and made up a racing game to play with my 3-year-old twins, who, impressively, ran the entire half-mile home, I put Baby in a bath, cleaned him all up, let him play in his little activity seat and then set to work on that car seat. At first I tried using a towel, but you just have to understand. There was so much. So much. So I took it out back, sprayed it with the water hose (It took a full 15 minutes to get all that puke out. So much.) and let it dry in the sun, which was probably better for it anyway.
And then, more recently, there was this:
Maybe you can’t tell as well from the picture, BUT THAT’S POOP. Because what’s in a baby’s diaper doesn’t always stay in a baby’s diaper, unfortunately. This little stank accident happened without my even knowing. I happily carried Baby upstairs, like I always do, without a clue that every time his cute little butt bounced on my arm was another opportunity for that nastiness to break out onto my skin. Once I put him down in his crib to go get a diaper, and I found this.
It was all up his back, all in his shirt, all over his legs, all over me. What’s weird is that it didn’t smell. Or at least not enough for me to notice. Or maybe it’s just because my house smells like a swamp anyway, because boys aren’t great at flushing the toilet.
Just after snapping this picture, I pontificated aloud to my twins about how this was an impressive smear and, astonishingly, a first in these years with six boys. They didn’t listen until I came to the word “poop.”
Twin 1: Let me see it, Mama.
Me: See?
Twin 2: Ewww!
Me: Want to smell it?
Twins, simultaneously: Yes!
Me:
Twins:
Me: Um. No. I was just kidding.
In spite of all the gross things that could possibly happen (and there are definitely more than these. We haven’t even broached the subject of snot.), I totally think babies are worth it. I would clean up a thousand of those for one of these:
I bet you would, too. Just don’t ever say I didn’t warn you.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
So there’s laundry. And then there’s putting laundry away. One of these things doesn’t happen at our house.
I usually slave over at least eight loads of laundry every Tuesday–and that’s if the boys don’t put all their dirty clothes in the laundry, which they actually did this weekend, after we helped them clean their room and found six weeks worth of clothes on the floor. Not really. It was more like eight.
We hung most of them up, because I wasn’t about to put them all in the laundry, but some of them were obviously dirty, after a smell test performed by anyone but me, because you could not pay me enough money to hold up a boy’s sock–clean or not–to my sensitive nose. Well, maybe for a certain amount of money. How much are we talking?
Anyway, like I was saying, when the boys actually put all their dirty clothes in the laundry it’ll typically gain me an extra load or two.
It takes me all day to do laundry, because I don’t own a laundromat. And then it takes at least 45 minutes to sort it all.
I know, I know. Boys should be helping. And they will, eventually. It’s just that I usually only get to laundry when they’re in school, because when they’re home I’m so busy putting out fires and keeping them out of the refrigerator I can’t possibly juggle laundry in all that activity. I’m easily overstimulated. What can I say?
Also, I would kind of like to have my laundry done and not stalled out, which happens often when boys are invited into the laundry process. Mostly because we have the heavy-duty machines with a billion buttons, and if we know anything at all about kids, we know they like pressing buttons. So sometimes the towels get washed on delicate cycle in boiling hot water with enough water for a “tiny load” instead of the “gigantic load” it is. And sometimes, if I’m really lucky, the washer won’t even be washing like I think it is, and I won’t know until my phone timer goes off, telling me the load is done and I find that it is not, in fact, done, because someone pushed the start button one extra time, and it never got past the soaking stage, which just, essentially, added a whole hour to my laundry day.
So I just do it myself for now.
The way I fold laundry is I first dump it all out on my bed and then sort it into its eight different piles. My thought process behind this is that if those piles are blocking my bed, that means we can’t go to sleep until they’re put away. Husband, who is charged with the responsibility of teaching boys to put laundry away, because I’ve just spent my whole day washing it, doesn’t feel the same way, though. The piles are just things to be moved. And where he moves them is to the banister outside our bedroom door.
Here’s what the breakdown usually looks like from there:
Boy: Mama, I don’t have any sweat pants in my drawer.
Me [jugging the baby on a hip while I finish up frying eggs for breakfast because protein is king]: Okay. It’s probably in your laundry pile. I’ll come help you in a minute.
Boy: Okay. [disappears.]
[I finish up breakfast and get the plates on the table, set the baby in his high chair.]
Boy: [yelling from upstairs]: Don’t worry, Mama! I got some.
Me: [physically deflates]
I deflate because I know this is what it’s going to look like when I go back upstairs. Apparently, every single time we do laundry, the sweat pants, which are the only things my kids want to wear anymore, are always on the very bottom of the pile. Which means those sorted laundry piles don’t stay sorted laundry piles for long.
We’ve gotten so used to walking on clothes I don’t know what we’re going to do when someone decides to clean this up.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Words I never want to hear again:
“It’s a haunted house, Mama! We even made bloody fingers for snacks!”
What’s all this, you say? How I wish I knew. The best I can gather: some grand entrepreneurial idea, courtesy of the always-wants-to-make-money 8-year-old.
All I know is that I went to my bathroom for five minutes (okay, I was hiding in there longer than that. You just have to understand. It’s been SO LONG since I’ve gone to the bathroom without someone coming to comment on what color my panties are or pointing out the fact that I have no penis that I guess I just sort of got carried away. I didn’t even dare to wonder why no one was following me in. They were just waiting for their opportunity. And I took it. And this is what happened.)
When I came back downstairs I found a little shop of horrors. Let me just take you on a tour of this creation my sons somehow, remarkably, envisioned and turned into reality in record time.
These are bloody fingers. They’re not really fingers, of course. They’re just chopped up bananas, which was probably the closest thing to fingers the boys could find. On top of them you’ll find honey, jam and peanut butter. Yum.
This delightful snack is provided for the people who “visit our haunted house,” because my boys are good at hospitality.
This is…the obstacle course? The wannabe tent? The seating area that isn’t really a seating area? Your guess is as good as mine. Even after they explained that “people would crawl through this and we’d be waiting on the other side to scare them,” I don’t quite get how that could be scary. Mostly because I tried, and all they did was giggle the whole time, because I could hardly get my butt through the legs of the piano bench. The scariest part about it was considering how I was possibly going to explain to my husband that I needed help peeling a piano bench off my backside.
Here we have “The room where ghosts knocked down all the chairs.” Which I suppose could be pretty freaky, especially if those ghosts are 3-year-old twins and an 8-month-old baby. Remember the twins in The Shining? Kids are the creepiest. (Also, I’m pretty sure the bloody fingers must have splattered on the floor at some point when they were making them. Hence, the splatters you see beside the chair with a booster seat. Most definitely not blood, unless strawberry goodness flows through the veins of one of my kids. In which case I need to put a tap in that, because we go through a jar of jam every week.)
This is the “Haunting minion,” which I laughed about until I stepped into the bathroom and they turned out the lights and the toy started talking. This toy has never talked. I mean, it did, but its batteries ran out months ago, and if you’re a good parent you never replace the batteries in any battery-powered toy, because keeping your sanity is paramount, and you’re really doing it for their own good.
They almost had to pull me off the floor after that.
Then they took me up the stairs, made me close my eyes and showed me this:
I’m pretty sure I passed out for a minute, because I still suffer from post-traumatic stress every time I’m going down the stairs from that one time I fell down our stairs and nearly died.
I love how creative my boys can be, and I love that their little minds thought up something as elaborate as this haunted house, but we had to close up the little shop of horrors soon after they took me through it, because it was time for dinner and we needed the chairs. They were disappointed they didn’t make any money off the haunted house, but I explained to them that there are easier ways to make money that don’t require so much setup for very little payoff. I don’t think they were interested in hearing it.
Next time they have a grand entrepreneurial idea, I’m going to insist on seeing a business plan before the activation stage.
