Vomit Ninja: 10 Tips for Dealing With Your Upchucking Toddler

     My triumph and the source of much of my ninja prowess came from one evening when both of my smallest ones, and my husband came down with a bug that my oldest had the night before. My eight year old handled it like a pro. No trouble there. But being the only vertical adult the next night with... projectile.... and there was this blow out diaper at the same time... not enough hot water to wash ...all the bleach... and I'm not going to tell you more because I love you.

So grateful he's in the
independent upchucking
 stage.

     Needless to say, I developed a system, after much trial and error, and my youngest two watched two seasons of Puffin Rock before it was all said and done. My evening went down in flames but I arose like a phoenix, the Vomit Ninjah! It was one of those superhero back stories you wouldn't wish on anyone. So please, learn from my pain, and laugh at my jokes, because you know I got 'em. Nights like that, jokes are what keep you going.



     After all that I had the beautiful privilege of being told by a good friend that vomit management would fit under special skills on my mom resume. So now I have it in my head that I am an expert and like all good experts I feel that need to share my knowledge.

No rest for the weary

      Disclaimer: These are all, of course, based on my experiences with my own children, your kids might not throw up within similar parameters which would make my advice less useful. Feel free to leave any other tip and tricks in the comments. Also I am primarily dealing with how to deal with a toddler that is/will be throwing up, not how to treat a toddler to stop him from throwing up. In my house those things just have to run their course, the trick is trying to keep the other members of the house from getting it and to keep the toddler from destroying your home while they are sick.

So here are my...

     Top 10 Tips For Dealing With Your Upchucking Toddler

     The key phrase in all of my tips: Minimize collateral damage! They will throw up, the trick is to throw up in/on things that are easily sanitized and quick to clean up. Ideally this is a toilet but if you have a 9-18 month old that runs to the toilet when they are throwing up... maybe we can't be friends. Just kidding, please, please, please tell us your secrets!

1.) Once the toddler throws up don't move them to a new location unless you are sure that a.) they are done with this session of puking, or b.) you are sure that you can get them to a toilet or bathtub in less than 20 seconds.

2.) Grab washable things to stuff under the toddlers face, for example- towels, blankets, or your body (it washes, I promise).
Things not in this category include but are not limited to carpet, rugs, heirloom quilts, silk, leather or non waterproofed mattresses. Your hand is not an option because you need to keep the toddler from wandering while puking. Which brings us to number 3...

3.) You need to keep said toddler from stumbling through the house trailing who knows what who knows where behind them. Hold your toddler. Yes, hold the upchucking baby. This is at times counterintuitive. And I didn't say face the child towards you, though that might work if you are using your body as a... containing option. Keep the little one from spreading his distress all over the living room, bedroom or grandma's white sofa. Aim the vomit at the towel or blanket previously mentioned if you were able to grab one.
     Side note: Preschoolers can often be pointed toward a trash can but you need to be in arms reach to keep the child from a.)knocking it over after they successfully use it or b.) coming to talk to you before its actually over. I have in fact held one child in my lap, throwing up on a towel while keeping the preschoolers head in a trash can, also throwing up... one of my finest parenting moments.

See, pallet, towels, blanket, trash can,
hair back, and Captain America shield 

4.) Movie time! Once the child is done with their... well you know, put them on a blanket, stack of towels, or my favorite, a crib mattress covered with one of those, in front of the TV or some device that will keep their attention without needing to be touched. And if you are going to be using this moment to clean up... stuff... be sure that they are in a sea of peripheral washables so that you can...Minimize Collateral Damage... when the continually surprised child tries to get up while vomiting.

I may have gone overboard on
the NO HAIR SHALL
ESCAPE theme.

     Also secure loose hair. This step lets me feel good about not bathing my child after every upchuck because I feel like I can just wipe them down and not totally hose them off until it seems like we are finished. There is only so much hot water to go around and you need it for nearly boiling all the blankets and such that are continually going into your washing machine.

5.) Do not put the child to bed, or back to bed, as always seems to be the case with my kids, until they act more normal, for example my toddler won't sit and watch TV if he's feeling ok so that is part one of my back to bed cue, part two is that it has been between 30 minutes to an hour since the last incident. Please, please, do not rush this step. It will only end in disaster... total disaster.

6.) Never trust a toddler to sleep on a non waterproof mattress within 12 hrs of the last incident. I have made pallets on the floor for mine or put them on crib mattresses if I had enough to go around. If you do this, put a blanket to the side of the 'bed' because they sometimes lean off the bed when they start throwing up or, even better, try to get up to come get you, because its hard to yell MOMMY while you throw up.

     Clean up- these last tips have to do with clean up because in my experience no child four or younger gets a stomach bug without there being a massive clean up from that first SURPRISE that, when it does show up, always shows up in my house after the kids have been in bed for an hour.

7.) Mattresses, 8.) Carpet, 9.) Cars
     So much of what I do for these starts at the same point that I'm combining them. I keep a massive box of baking soda in my house, and I mean massive. Douse the throw up as soon as you can.
     It minimizes smell, absorbs liquids so it doesn't soak in, and makes it easy to grab when it clumps up the... chunks (so sorry to say it but you know it's true), also it allows you to vacuum whatever can not be easily picked up with a towel, wipe, paper plate cut in half (for real scooping power), or paper towel.

     On a mattress I, scoop, cover it with a towel and let it sit with random vacuuming and reapplying of baking soda for up to two days, until I don't smell anything. Getting the sheets off asap makes a big difference on a mattress.

     On carpet I typically scoop, vacuum remaining baking soda, work more baking soda down into the pile to get that last bit of... liquid... and vacuum again. The same with car upholstery.
     This works well for accidents too if you happen to be potty training, but that's an entirely different blog that I don't want to write.

     Car seats are a WHOLE other problem. Wash what you can and take a baking soda/Clorox wipe approach to what you can't. Just remember, baking soda is your friend in places you can't reach or bleach. And it rhymes!

10.) Maintenance is what I call this stage- As I have mentioned before, keep the kids occupied, TV works for us, and on something that you can scoop up, wipe off, or throw away, for about an hour if not more. For the really little ones I would hold them, comforter or blanket over me, towels around them, minimal clothing since they were wrapped up, if they threw up, I would wipe off their face with a clean corner, ball up all the fabric, and straight into the washer, (thank you Lord for the sanitize setting), and reset the blankets/towel for the next onslaught.

Psychological scarring

     Once I get the initial mess dealt with I typically can just do a daunting number of loads of laundry, occasional baths, and constant vigilance, for the remainder of the night and come out exhausted but with my home relatively unscathed. My psyche is a whole other subject that would also need its own blog and really, you just don't want to know...

     And here is the Vomit Ninja, signing off and hoping that you never need my advice, but if you do, you know who to call... a friend who can read you my advice, since you have your hands full.

Proverbs for the Hard Headed

     This message is brought to you by that precious moment in the day that I fondly call the witching hour, which is, as you know, when even the best of mothers feel the beginning of exhaustion start to set in and the children, smelling weakness, prey upon her sanity. And Proverbs 19:21-

Many are the plan's of a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.

     We were home and there were potatoes in the oven for dinner. The kids had been snacked and were either working on homework or playing. All was going according to plan.
You see, I had a plan. Dinner was planned, baths were planned, and then books and off to bed, after which cleaning was the plan. The vanity of it all.

They are laughing at my plans and
conspiring against me. 

     There was a nasty smell about and I snagged the youngest and took him to the changing table. Some of you are cringing expecting this to he where the 'fun' begins. Not yet, but it's coming.

     All went as expected, but even though my youngest was clean enough I felt that, it being bath night anyways, it was bath time.

     Ah, the feeble plans of men.

     I turn on the water and immediately am assaulted by a crash and a scream or two. The older two sprint past the door, fleeing the scene of the crime, and I grab them to get an account of what was destroyed, mauled, or on fire.

     Putting them both in time out for touching the blinds, that is what the crash was, I head that way to asses the extent of the damage.

     I pause by the bathroom to turn off the bath water and discover it is as cold as ice. Yes, I checked that I had the right handle on the faucet on, and, thank goodness, I was not yet so far gone as to have turned on the cold by mistake.

    Therefore, my only conclusion was that there was no hot water, and that there was a problem with the hot water heater.

      I call my husband, and text my landlord after looking in the closet to see if there was anything obviously wrong, as in something had expolded or was leaking. Nope, and that exhausted my level of expertice, thus the text was sent.

     So my landlord says he will be here in 10 min. and I frantically try to make sure that our dirty underwear is put away and that we don't look like total slobs, while trying to boil water to make use of the bathtub full of cold water that I still really need to put a child into, meanwhile, the little prince, was running around diaperless because he was about to be put in the tub... you see where this is going, right?

He likes shoes...
 maybe too much.

     Well, he peed in my shoe... like you do... and pooped in the laundry room... because... I don't know. He had just had a poopy diaper, I thought I had a few moments at least.

     So, small child to the now coolish, not cold tub thanks to a pot of boiling water, rinse the shoe with cold water because that's all I had, towel for the pee, bleach to the laundry room, a few more items into the useless dishwasher, other items with bodily fluids stuffed unceremoniously into the useless washing machine, but hey they aren't in the walkway, and then I remember to go to see what the big kids are up to.

     No idea when time out ended. Not my most consistent parenting moment but, there was pee in my shoe and poop on the floor, sometimes you have to prioritize. And at some point in my panicked hurrying I had shooed them to the other end of the house so that I was only cleaning off one child. Disaster adverted. Ha!

     In the middle of the floor lies the broken blinds in a crumpled heap. I stick these back up as best I can while growling threats to confiscate all their money to the end of time if they touch them again.

     Once I turn and actually look at them I grab the bubbles that they were in the process of getting out (so not allowed in the house) from their already sticky hands, tossing them in the trash because all mercy left when the poop arrived and I set the wayward older children to cleaning the living room.

     This, being their favorite thing to do in the whole wide world (feel the sarcasm), leads to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

     I am in the process of chewing the oldest out for whining and arguing, and calling the sneaky middle child who had slipped away while pretending she was putting something up, and of course the doorbell rings.
   
     Landlord is here.

     I escort him to the hot water heater, telling him what I know and then run off to the other end of the house to rescue the screaming baby in the once again icy tub.

     The baby was dried and diapered... I'm a quick learner... and my husband arrived to get the older kids to finish picking up the living room.

I took this right before we left
the house. I earned this crazy.

     Turns out that the storms last night tripped a breaker, and since we have never lived in a place where storms trip breakers not to mention that our last hot water heater was gas, it hadn't even occurred to us. Still we feel a little dumb for not trying that before we call.

     So we apologize to our very kind landlord and set about putting together dinner in a frantic it's a school night and my husband has somewhere to be in an hour sort of way. Yep, the meat was still frozen and the potatoes weren't done after over an hour...

     Before I had even had a chance to internalize this and begin to break my wise husband bundled all the kids into the car and we all went to Chick-fil-a...

     ...where the playground was closed...

     ...because it's that kind of day.

It's a hey your not all that, you still need me, up here, God speaking, so listen up, I've got you, love you even though your hard headed, sort of day. And I had a lovely dinner with my beautiful children.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.

Proverbs 16:9

Trouble Comes in Threes

     You know that saying that trouble comes in threes? Well I believe it! Three days, three kids, three different illnesses. I'm just praying that it doesn't get shared three ways because this thing could initiate a geometric growth pattern before you could bleach the first door knob.

Child one, day one, illness one:

      Friday night, or more correctly early Saturday morning my youngest started throwing up. He felt a little warm but I didn't think feverish. I sat up with him all night remembering how a mere six hours previously he had been having a grand old time sticking his pacifier in my mouth.

      'What was that? Is my stomach growling or groaning? Do I feel queasy or is it just that someone has been throwing up on me all night?'

     Parenthood is hypochondria, always trying to not overthink yourself into a self induced illness and yet subvert illnesses as quickly as possible because... you're a parent. 

     The little prince was grumpy from lack of sleep but ate well and kept it all down the next day. No one else showed any similar symptoms until..

Child two, day two, illness two:

     My oldest boy started to complain of a headache on Saturday afternoon. It was bad enough that he didn't eat much dinner and went to bed with little fuss, which is the true indication of illness.

     'Did the little one start with a headache? How would I know? What does a one year old with a headache look like? I bet sweet boy starts throwing up around midnight. It's most likely the same thing.'

     The headache kept him from sleeping, only abating with Tylenol, and lasted through Sunday night. I finally called the nurse and she recommended sleep and bringing him in tomorrow if he still had it in the morning. He was fine the next morning.

     Parenthood is over analyzing every possible symptom. If you can catch it early maybe it won't spread to the rest of us, and then back and to the rest of us and... you get the picture. 

      So we survived the weekend, everyone's healthy again... right?

 Child three, day three, illness three:

      Both boys are finally rested up from their interrupted nights. We all head our separate ways on Monday morning. When I pick up baby girl she seems lethargic.

     'Maybe she was kept up while the boys were sick and hasn't caught up yet? Maybe her allergies are acting up? Maybe she's really hungry.'

     We all lie down for afternoon naps, baby girl wanted to cuddle so I inevitable drift off as well. When I wake up, because it's time to pick up the oldest from school, I notice that she feels HOT! I rush us all into the car, pick up my oldest.
    Once he is in the car I call their pediatrician and sit on hold. Meanwhile I run by the house for a thermometer, some Tylenol, which is becoming a hot commodity in our household, and our forgotten lunch (one asleep in the car on the way home, the other asleep while we waited for Daddy to eat with us = no lunch til 3:30 pm).

     Her temp is 102. Headache? A little. Stomach ache? Not really. Link to the boys? None that I can see.

     About this time I'm finally off hold and get an appointment.

     The verdict: Strep… which we had less than a month ago… which is not known for causing headaches that go away or vomiting. Of course, it is something totally different.

     I have them test the little prince for good measure (the oldest was with his Dad since taking three to the doctor is a nightmare of epic proportions), and stare open mouthed when the doctor confirms that as far as she can tell, they all have had different things.

     Three days…three unrelated problems… one half glance at what my future self would look like if they all pass these around was enough to make me slam a mental door on that thought and try to figure out how none of these could be transferable.

     'Maybe they all had a cold and it opened them up to be susceptible to different secondary problems? They aren't sharing cups. No one else should get strep, right? Maybe the little one had food poisoning and the oldest had allergies. Those aren't really catchable illnesses. They can't all get all of these things?' 

     Parenthood is coming up with reasons when what you see defies reason, or logic, or what you think you can survive. 

Parenthood, when you put it all together, is calling your mom to ask,"How in the world is this even possible!?"

If you spill a box of spaghetti...

     I knew I was too tired to function when I absentmindedly leaned over to straighten the baby gate and poured out half a box of dry spaghetti.
     I know the box was closed when I bought it, children had put it in the cart and on the conveyor at check-out, and no open package will survive that. Also I was pretty sure that it had been closed moments before when I had fished it out of the bags in the car and walked in with it, which was just before the moment that I had leaned over to fix the baby gate. Therefore I must have opened said box somewhere between the car and the house without knowing it.
     A mom on autopilot is not a good thing... in so many ways.

They look harmless...

     After I finished taking care of cooking the rest of the spaghetti, (I was making dinner for our church so it really couldn't be put off), I herded all the kids into my middle childs room, the neatest, most baby friendly room in the house, handed the kids an ipod with instructions to watch two Mickey Mouse cartoons, no more, (that's all we had time for before we needed to leave for church,) and lay down on the floor to take a power nap.
     The older two were happy with the cartoon and the youngest went back and forth between bothering his siblings and poking at me. In spite of all this, and the fact that I was lying on the floor, I was out in no time. A testament to how deep my exhaustion went.
     A blissful and peaceful moment.
     I was suddenly very awake when a vaguely familiar shooting pain exploded from my nose. The familiar feeling was my youngest son shoving his finger as hard as he could up my nose. I wish I could say this was the first time this had ever happened, but I can't.  I can say that this was the first time that I had woken up to it, though. I wish I knew why he did it, but I don't. I even wish that I could say that I woke up kindly and without shoving the assaulting infant away from me, but yeah right.

I got your nose!

     Well, now I was awake, very awake, and I knew what was coming next, my nose was bleeding, majorly bleeding. As I attempted to staunch, or catch, or divert the flow from my clothes, my children, and/or the carpet, my oldest began to freak out. He doesn't like blood. Trying to speak over the budding hysterics and dripping, I asked him to get toilet paper, or a washcloth, or anything from the other room for me.
     This is where it got interesting.
     I hear the clunk clunk of the doorknob, and the worried, "Uhhhh" of my son. "It's locked." he says.
     'That's crazy, who would lock the door, while we were all on the inside'.
     The spaghetti incident did not bode well for that train of thought so I moved on to train of thought B-
     'Can't be'.
     Assuming that he was just over reacting to the blood I fumble for the knob myself and find that it indeed is locked.

     Locked...
     My phone... in the other room...
     My husband... on his way to church
     The lockpick... not above the door

     In quick succession all my solutions were flying out the door that I couldn't get open.
     So I sat there, dripping blood, trying to figure out how to use the ipod to get a message to my husband while the kids scoured the room for something long and thin enough to pick the lock.

     Did I mention that this was the cleanest, most baby friendly room in the house?

     No such luck.

     One of the older ones had smuggled in one of the sticks of spaghetti, I had missed a few when I cleaned up the first disaster of the afternoon, but the piece was a little too short and I was afraid it would break off in the lock and ruin all of our future chances.
     Finally my eyes lit on the window.

     Had I left the front door unlocked?

     It was the one window with no screen so that wasn't the problem. Would I be able to fit my large bleeding self through that opening, into the rose bush that was planted just in front of it?

     No way.

     But my oldest could fit!
     I lowered him out the window, and around the bush, trying not to bleed on him... where he would see it... and he ran around the corner of the house.
     A few long seconds later we hear the rattle of the door knob, this time from the outside and resolving with that beautiful final clunk that meant that it was now unlocked.
     "I rescued you!" he exclaimed as he bounced through the door.

     Nodding to his self accolades I run to the shower to clean off and to avoid making a bigger mess while the bleeding stopped. Soon all was cleaned up and we were finally on our way.

Best excuse...ever.

     This is why dinner for the church was late but...
 
 you have to admit that this is one of the best excuses you've heard in a really, really, long time.

The Day of Rest, and Other Such Nonsense

     It all started with something that would normally be an exciting thing. I fit into a pair of pants that I haven't been able to wear in two years. Go me!

     I was nervous about wearing them to church so I asked my sweet husband how they looked and though they looked great he noticed a small tear in them that meant that the kids got to sit in the car while I hurriedly tried to change outfits. This made them more than a little antsy but it was over quickly, and I felt that disaster had been averted, (ha ha ha). I jumped in the car and we headed out.
      Once at church Daniel took off because he was leading singing and teaching the kids class upstairs so he had a ton of last minute prep work to do. All I had to do was feed the kids and keep everyone contained until church started. No sweat... (once again, ha ha ha)!

That is the grin I'm talking
about. Pure mischief.

     Within five minutes the food was abandoned and the mobile children were off. So I had a seat while my little prince smeared pancakes on my pants and shirt and... anything else he could reach. A few moments later the children came to find me to see if they could go play outside.
     Before church, in your dress clothes with no one free to make sure that you don't get run over? I think not. The answer is a firm no.
     The prince finishes his smearing and I set him down to try brush some of the mush off my person. Within moments I hear crying, I spin around and see that baby girl is laying on her little brother, and, obviously, he wasn't a fan. Her mischievous grin made it clear that she was aware of his disapproval.
     Sensing that justice was approaching she hopped up, turned around and took off out the front door which my oldest was holding open for some unknown reason. Perhaps he was an accomplice. I take off after her, pull her inside, and am in the middle of giving her a vicious talking to when I hear screaming behind me. Taking a deep breath I once again spin around to confront what ever disaster is brewing behind me.
     Baby girl makes her escape, the little prince heads off to try to eat a bug, and as I turn around I am sure that I am about to discover that my sweet boy has a hangnail since that is the level of harm that has resulted in such shrieking for the last week or two.

Bugs?! I don't eat... oh wait,
yeah, I'll eat bugs.

      Instead I see him with his arm pinched in the hinge of the front door. A totally shriek worthy experience. I rush over to release him and hold him for a moment before forcing him to let me look at his arm. A bloody looking bruise has already formed and so I hurry to get ice on it.
     I set him down in a pew, round up the escapee and the bug eater and settle us all down. My poor sweet boy is unusually calm as he ices his injury but the other two make up for his lack of enthusiasm and activity. Since Daniel is up front leading singing some wonderful friends sit at the other end of the pew to act as bouncers when, not if, one of the overly active children attempts to escape. Bless them!
     So over the course of the singing part of the service the younger two break my necklace, losing the charm somewhere down my shirt, and pour out a pencil box of crayons, all this punctuated with bouts of flailing and whining. But the pièce de résistance is when baby girl grabs the bag that had once held ice for sweet boys arm, and now holds ice cold water, and shoves it down my shirt.

The cuteness belies the craziness
they exude from every pore. 

     Now I'm the one flailing, and by some miracle, not screaming. Daniel has just sat back down with us as this happens so I lob the ice bag somewhere down the pew, toss the child to Daniel and try to pull myself together as communion comes down the aisle.
This is the moment where I glance at Daniel and I have two choices, hysterical tears or hysterical laughter. Daniels mouth twitches and my shoulders begin to shake... with laughter, and a few tears, but mostly laughter. 
     The poor guy passing the tray down our pew gives us a strange look, and I still had to fish my broken necklace out of my cleavage, but Daniel took the little prince up with him to do announcements, and I got half a moment to breathe. 
     In much the way that any landing you can walk, or limp, away from is a success, any Sunday morning that you can laugh at is a successful Sunday morning. Not a pleasant, uplifting, or enjoyable Sunday morning, but certainly a successful one. 
     Even my successful Sundays could hardly be qualified as a "Day of Rest" but I know that by being there, teaching them to sit, and praying that some essence of my love for God and the church drifts their way I am laying a foundation for the rest of their lives. Therefore I embrace the craziness and the laughter and vow to wear a turtle-neck next week.

How Kids Are Like Heroin

     Kids are heroin. They are destructive to your physical, mental and societal well being, and you keep coming back for more, you just can't resist.

Your first pregnancy, the one where you took naps without the risk of waking up to wanton destruction, and subsequent child lure you in with the false high of their first smiles, the adorable babbling, and the tiny clothes.
So you think... "Let's have another. We can handle this."

Then there is two of them...
Here is where you start to feel the pain... the lack of sleep, money, and time, not to mention no cuddles with the hubby (unless you are forming a two year old sandwich).
But, somehow, it getting harder is a challenge, as if you are waving red in front of a bull.
People say three is so hard. But you can do it. The oldest can be so much help now. You are ready for this! You got it!
So you pep talk your self into having a third...

This is when you realize where your addiction has left you...
Broke. Tired. Bruised. Sore.

How likely is she to sit on
the baby if I go potty?

...and the high from those little booties and the tiny giggles just doesn't quite break through the fog that your sleep deprived zombie brain lives in. You stare at the third, loving them more than anything in the world, trying to formulate coherent sentences but only gibberish comes out.

Here is your life on three kids...
You dress thinking things like...
     How much spit up will this shirt hide?
     If a child hangs on my pocket will these pants end up around my ankles in the middle of a Walmart parking lot like last time?
     Can you really even see that hole?

There really is no reason to spend time thinking about what actually looks good on your body because your body has been so stretched by pregnancy, sleeplessness, stress, and a deep craving for chocolate ice cream that even when your blessedly wonderful husband extols the beauty of your form you stare at him wondering if photoshop has somehow been installed directly into his brain.

Of course the baby needs to
wear the choking hazard
wings, Mom.

You can no longer carry on a conversation.
Instead you have disjointed half finished bits of information exchange floating around, each sentence puntuated by "No, no, no!", "Get that out of your mouth!" and "We don't hit our friends." until most of the meaning is lost and never mind there being a point.

You long for escape
 Then they leave...
 Kindergarten, summer camp, or weekend with the grandparents...
 And all you can do is talk about the kids, what are they doing, what are we going to do when they get back, what they did last week.
And worse than that you worry, worry, worry...
Every night that they are gone you lie awake very aware of the fact that you didn't check to see if they were breathing and sniffling about the fact that when you dropped them off they didn't even look at you, just mumbled "Bye mom" and took off running.

Selfie of a six year old.

You rush back to pick them up envisioning running towards one another with open arms and instead you find that the joyful energetic child you dropped off has used up all their good behavior points while gone and you get the leftover troll points instead.
Within an hour you're ready to send them back so that you can miss them again.

But then your baby, the third, the one who didn't get a nursery, who ate off the floor, didn't have a changing table, and developed an early and uncanny ability to pull full glasses of liquid into your lap, learns to walk.
...

Your heart starts beating fast, your palms get sweaty...
You don't have a baby, you have a toddler!

Your mind starts to wander towards the inevitable place... but your push the thought aside and sleep though the night for the third time in a row.
But it keeps popping up...
Finally you hold someones newborn.
You really should have known better.
And then the last straw.
The moment when you cross the line and there is no turning back.
You really just can't help yourself...

You smell it!

That is when those sneaky addiction thoughts slip in and the what if's start...
     What if we have one more?
     What is the big deal about adding another?
     Four isn't that many more than three in the grand scheme of things.
     You've done it before and it worked out just fine.
     Just one more...
     Just one last time...
   
See...

Heroin

4:00 pm Comes For Us All

 

Too cute to be the source of so much
trouble, right?

     Baby girl came to me with her toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste. That is where is all started.

     "I want to brush my teeth Mommy."

     Such a sweet simple statement. And 15 minutes later I find myself on the verge of hysterics.

     I should start by saying it was after 4:00 pm. And all the moms say, "Ahhhh..." in that understanding way. That really should have clued me in. Nothing good starts after 4:00 pm. That is when the children go crazy because they are getting tired, hungry and/or bored and they know if they go crazy at 4:00 then all the craziness damage is done and dealt with before Daddy can get home to put a stop to it. It is all part of their plan to take over the world, but that is another post.

     So, as I said it was 4:00 and baby girl wanted to brush her teeth. My little prince often gets the grumps about this time so I had him in the wrap to soothe him while I got a little something done, at least that was my theory until someone wanted to brush their teeth. 

     I pasted up the toothbrush, tightened the lid back on very securely, and sent her to the bathroom to brush to her little hearts content all the while thinking how proud I was of her for making such good choices. The happy mommy moment should have been a clue too.

     My sweet boy runs by to let me know he is using my bathroom because baby girl is in theirs. So far, so good. Nothing to see here. I walk by the bathroom, I no longer remember why, and see that girl child with her mouth around the tube of toothpaste... yes... eating it!

     Let me take a moment to say, ew!

     She pulls it out of her mouth and stands there looking guilty. 

     "Did you eat the toothpaste?" I ask her and she says "noooooo" in that long, I think I'm giving the answer mom wants to hear sort of way.

     I've been a mom long enough to be pretty sure the two year old is lying to me so I ask again after a long pause and she says yes, she ate the toothpaste. Ate it! 

     Why, why, why!!?? 

     Why do I still even ask why?! 

     The tube tells me to call poison control and I keep their number on the fridge, easy access for just such occasions. This is not my first rodeo and at least I don't have them on speed dial... yet.

     So I'm talking to the nice, calm lady a poison control and am giving her all the information from the tube, the concentration of fluoride, what type of fluoride and how much she might have eaten. The tube was mostly empty and travel size to begin with so I was fairly sure that she was fine but when they are so little you never know and I would rather be safe.

     The nice lady begins to tell me that she is fine and would have to eat more than the whole full tube to do any harm but if I give her a glass of milk it will counteract even the harmless but uncomfortable symptoms of eating toothpaste like an upset stomach. 

It's all part of the master plan
mom! When you least
expect it.

     I start pouring the milk as she is telling me this when my sweet boy bursts into the kitchen from the direction of my bedroom. "Mommy! There is a potentially dangerous situation!" he breathlessly tells me. I assume this means there is an ant in the bathroom or my straightener is on the bathroom counter and tell my oldest son that I'm on the phone and it will have to wait. This is his cue to notice that I'm getting his sister some milk, the unfairness of which is far more important, so he abruptly changes tracks and begins to whine for milk. Why? Because it's 4:15 pm.

     The nice lady is still talking and asking a few questions which I am miraculously managing to answer when I hear, as I walk to find the girl to give her the milk, "Mommy! I had an accident!" This is when I think the nice lady started struggling to not laugh at me and once she heard me say "Why are you in your brothers crib?!" she got off the phone with me awfully quickly and her voice had the quirky sound of someone who was about to laugh her head off once she was out of ear shot. 

     So now I have a half naked toddler in the baby's crib, an accident next to the crib (thank goodness!) complete with a little pile of pants and underwear, a kindergartner explaining why it's not fair that his sister is getting milk, and I catch a whiff of spit up from the baby strapped to my front. Why not? I give the toddler the milk, put a towel over the accident, take a deep breath and then ask my sweet boy what he was trying to tell me about while I was on the phone.

"Oh, the toilet won't flush! It just fills and fills and fills with water!" 

...

Of course...

     I walk to my bathroom, check that the toilet has not yet overflowed, close the door, and then just walk away, all the while mumbling things about help me Lord, children, where is your father, it was just 15 minutes, and how I hate 4:30 pm.

Clean vs. Neat

Sweet Boy

There is always the first child...
      So, the way I see it, with your first kid, some have a system some don't. There seems to be some wiggle room there for individual interpretation, if you will. You can be a rigid 'junior eats at precisely 8:02 am' parent or a 'go with the flow, whatever we feel like' parent and it seems to work.

So people have a second...

Baby Girl

     The second child often makes people think, "We need some rules around here or basic guide lines of some sort." and a system is born. Often the system is beautiful and complete with two children. The chaos of life is manageable with minimal panic. Things get done and there are enough hands to deal with the break downs. Life is a little louder and more stressful but you can always call a sitter and slip out for the evening to recoup.

The Little Prince

And then there was a third...
     Thus far in my experience it seems it is the third child that makes God laugh, pat you on your sweet overconfident head, and then break your beautiful system in to tiny irreparable pieces. After my third child, who was not a difficult child by most standards, my whole system fell apart. I'm talking, sitting in my living room surrounded by piles of whatnot crying with all the children, apart.

Real life- you can't see it but
the youngest is weeping too.

    To be fair, it may be that I'm not especially well cut out for this big family thing, or that my standards are too high (Ha! She said standards!), or even that I was fooling myself to think that I ever had a system that really worked. I have considered this and decided that I really think it's just that my beautiful little prince broke my system. My system, and to an extent, me, maxed out at two and burst at the seams with three.

   And here is the crux of the matter. The real trouble I have, as I drift in system-less space, can be summed up like this: There is a saying that trying to clean with a toddler in the house is like trying to brush your teeth while eating Oreos. Now multiply that times three. Though I like the idea of three Oreos (hold the toothpaste) I'm actually referring to the rampant destruction that three children can leave in the wake of their every move.
Let me explain how things have changed.

          Instead of a quarantine on the mess created while your work in another area, for example: "Go disassemble your room while I clean the main living areas", you have to quarantine the cleanness, for example: "No one in the living room making a mess behind me while I'm cleaning it." Instead of picking up the toys in the living room you try to remove the choking hazards in the living room. Instead of "Put your dirty clothes in the hamper" it is "Toss your clothes in the laundry room and hope that nothing eats you alive when you open it's door".

    I could go on but from here we enter the realm of you don't want to know, its all down hill from there, and it might make me cry a little.

"We got Mommy's phone!"

     I have never been a neat person but I have always been a clean person. It's a "I might have clutter and piles but my toilets are clean" sort of thing. Having to let go of that has been the hardest part of having three children for me. My family needs neat to function and clean may or may not follow as closely as I like when my attempt to transition from straightening up so things are neat to cleaning is interrupted by a wrestling match gone wrong, the mystery thuds followed by screams, or a blow out diaper.
 
     The question I keep asking myself is how do I feel content, and confident, enough in my sometimes partially neat house to have friends over, or host a play-date and not cringe and apologize. It is a questions that I don't have an answer to. Maybe I need to embrace the chaos, relax and let go. Maybe I need to put in some extra energy and effort to try to find a neatness solution that will work for my family. I always seem to find, after much prayer and petition, that the answer is somewhere in the middle. A happy medium that results in a functional solution that takes into account the big picture and yet allows me to take pride in a home that will always look like happy children live there.

     I wouldn't trade my little mess makers for the world, they one of the most precious things in my life and are a constant source of joy...

.... but I have considered confiscating their allowance to hire a maid.