Monday, October 24, 2011

bodily substances

Yesterday started out as any other weekend day. The kids woke up too early and wishing they would sleep in for once I wondered why on school days I couldn't drag them out of bed. Of course the first thing the children wanted to do before the sun was even up was to hold the new baby chicks we had just acquired at the chicken swap. Children never seem to want to do anything sensible at god forsaken hours...not read books, play quietly in their room, or listen to their new cd player-no the first idea that hatched in my kids' head before they were even fully awake was to hold chickens. I remember when we (my brothers and I) woke up on the weekends and made even the slightest noise before 10 am my father would roar, "is the house on fire?", through the closed bedroom door. We then would answer, "no", and he would respond, "then not another peep". Instead of this I tell my children that they can go play with the chickens as long as they just let us sleep for a little while longer and change out of their pjs first. That was my first mistake. It only took 10 minutes for the end of our morning "sleeping in" to fade like the remnants of the dream still hemming my thoughts. With a munchkin voice somewhere in the room saying, "chicken poop on the carpet", I shot out of bed like a rocket. It wasn't an easy transition. I rushed out to the garage and found 6 piles of poo lying around, 2 of them with child like footprints and tracks leading into the house. One child had feces from wrist to shoulder, while yet another had remnants on the back of her pant leg and on her back pocket. The 3rd little cherub had tracked the lovely fragrant repulsion through the house. Five minutes later in my robe scrubbing up chicken poop and remember moments ago when I was in a cozy bed, I rued the day I ever decided to have pets. Having taken care of most of the chicken excrement disaster, children bathed, 2nd set of clothes for the day, I began to prepare breakfast (what else are you going to do with 3 shiny faces smiling proudly at their well executed plan to get Mommy out of bed). I noticed my youngest, who always helps with meals, looked a little pale. She complained of a headache (she actually said "my knuckle hurt", which translates to "neck", which when she showed me was in fact the back of her head). She hadn't gotten much sleep the days prior, missing naps and going to bed later than usual because of our busy schedule, so I attributed any lethargy to this. I took her temp. and it registered at 99.1, which is in her normal range, but I gave her some baby Tylenol just in case. I am allergic to red food dye and I discovered 2 minutes after giving my baby "cherry flavored" medicine that she was too, as was evident from the vomit. I gave up trying to wipe puke out of her hair and put her in the tub...again. After she was washed, dried, and dressed, I proceeded to finish breakfast. She needed to go potty so I left her on the toilet, verbally checking in to see when the wiping job would need to occur. After 10 minutes, which was an unusually long time for her to do her business, I went in to check on her only to discover brown streaks on the toilet seat that she was continually trying to clean up by licking her finger and rubbing it around on the white porcelain. The third bath/outfit of the day had me questioning why I ever cleaned up anything to begin with. My favorite part...all before 9:00 am.

1 comment:

  1. It's quite amazing how much work they make for us! 3 kids, a house to keep clean, and a job...a few months ago I was complaining that I was tired and someone said that I should sleep more and exercise (of course this person had no children) and I kinda wanted to punch them in the face! If only it were that easy :)

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