Children!!!

When Brandon and I married, we had some adjustments to make.  He liked to watch Homestar Runner, and I was very specific about indoor lighting.  At first we drove each other crazy.  "Is he watching that stupid cartoon again?!?" I would think as he giggled while watching a stupid cartoon for the third time in two days.  "Did I just turn that overhead light on so that she could turn it off again?!?" he would think as I ran for the light switch and shut the glaring light off in favor of various diffuse lighting sources.

Over time, however, we accepted each others' idiosyncracies and then eventually adopted them ourselves.  Brandon turns of whatever overhead lighting the children have flipped on in a room before I can get to it, and the girls love it when I wear my Teen Girl Squad T-shirt to breakfast on Saturday.

There is a particular Teen Girl Squad cartoon that has the characters being dispatched by various completely random and bizarre methods.  One of the characters gets run over a van while Strongbad growls "children!!!"  There some times when the children have been so over-the-top crazy, that Brandon and I look at each other and growl "children!!!" simultaneously, knowing that we just got run over by the children van.

Saturday night was one of those nights.

Sunday morning we have church, so often we bathe the children Saturday night in order to meet Sunday morning slightly more prepared.  So yesterday evening we popped all four children in our master bathroom soaking tub (more on that in another post).  One day I'm going to have to give up and bathe them separately, but right now I can still cram them all in the same tub.

After washing Joseph, I pulled him out and started toweling him down on my bed.  Just as I got his diaper on, I heard Sophia's worried cry.

"Mom! I just peed all over the floor!"

I looked in the bathroom and saw the enormous puddle that my three and half year-old who has been trained for two years made on the floor.

"Could you give me something to clean it up with?" she asked.  It was then I decided that Joseph was really hungry and needed to be fed right then before he went to bed. "Ask your father," I told her over my shoulder as I retreated to my chair and took what advantage I could from being Joseph's only source of nutrition.

Brandon came in, brought Sophia some paper towels, and she set to work - naked - cleaning up the mess.  At least she was responsible after her irresponsibility.  "At least it was just pee," I thought, "and on the bathroom floor instead of the carpet."

I kept nursing Joseph.  Boy was he hungry.

And then Kathleen started yelling.

"Moooommmmm!!!  Moooomm!!! Edwin just pooped in the bathtub!!!"

Brandon ran into the bathroom to survey the damage.  Kathleen leaped out of the water and ran to get dressed.  Edwin started crying.  "Poooot. poooot. poooot!"  He repeated, knowing whatever had happened couldn't be good.

I kept nursing Joseph.

Brandon fished out Edwin.  He got Edwin dressed.  He helped Sophia finish cleaning up her mess.  He helped Sophia get dressed.  He fetched a bucket.  He started scooping out Edwin's mess.  He rinsed out the tub.  He rinsed it out again.  He might have said a few choice words about his two middle children.

And I finished nursing Joseph, after a good, long nurse.  Isn't it great to have a baby sometimes?