August 31st

I have no picture for this day, but I am going to paint you an imaginary picture. I am getting a little bit tired of whining about how crazy my boys are, but I am also blown away by the fact that we can NOT get through a day without some kind of incident involving an extreme mess.

So, Thursday morning, Derrick and I are each doing our separate activities. (That was our mistake - one of us should have been watching the boys, though we were both within sight of them). Suddenly I hear Derrick saying something like "What are you doing? No, No, No!" I turn around, and there are our toddlers covered from head to toe in vasaline. They got into a mostly-full jar, and completely emptied it onto each other, the floor, the door behind them, the heat vent/grate. Derrick took them to the bath tub, and I did my best to clean up the living room before I had to run out to take Jayna to the doctor for her Kindergarten physical (she passed!).

While I was at the doctor with Jayna, Derrick was getting the boys cleaned, lunched, and then put to bed. I got home shortly after they went down for naps, and then Derrick left for work for the night. A couple hours later the boys were awake, I went upstairs to get them, and the smell of poop was overwhelming. And J was diaperless. So I searched the room but couldn't find a poopy diaper. I did, however, find poop. On the floor. On J's bed. On J's hands and shirt. On toys and clothes that were scattered around the room. Smeared onto the front of the air conditioner. Meanwhile, the boys had started their usual post-nap begging for a snack, and getting very upset because I was thinking about anything other than getting their snack. So stressful. (I did eventually find the diaper, btw.)

Fast forward through snack time, and part of the afternoon. Sometime around 4:30, I was making dinner and on the phone at the same time (I'm thinking about giving up the phone while the boys are awake, because seriously, it's just TOO MUCH). I glanced in the living room and found T sitting on the couch holding a bottle of algae killer he'd gotten from the cabinet under the fish tank. The bottle was empty. And there was a puddle on the floor in front of the fish tank. I just about had a melt down right then and there. My friend Tiff was on the other end of the phone waves, and she said "Jeannine, you should just take them to McDonald's." And that's what I did. I couldn't handle one more thing happening that day, so I took them all to McDonald's for dinner, and we didn't come home until it was bed time.

When the vasaline thing happened, I did run for the camera, but it wouldn't turn on. The battery was dead. And it was a couple days before I thought to charge it. So. (ha, I just ended a sentence with "so.")