Last Monday

Y'all. I haven't blogged lately because I have ALL THESE CHILDREN.  I really love writing, but they love being fed, and having clean bottoms and being on time for school, and sometimes those things interfere with each other. And yes, I do know that there are some people who even have more than just two children and they manage just fine. I am not them.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe

She had so many children she didn't know what to do

And you'll notice that the mother is nowhere to be found in this picture because she is hiding in the closet eating all the easter candy and drinking gas station wine. 

The End. 

Enough about that. I don't judge your choice of modular shoe homes. 

Let's talk about last Monday. It was the day after Easter. When The Boy woke up he was already grieving because there was no more Easter bunny toast. On Easter morning the Easter bunny had left a trail of plastic eggs into the kitchen where he (or she) had cut some sandwich bread into the shape of a bunny for toast. But alas, he (or she) had only left two pieces and it was all gone, and the boy was in an Easter candy hangover funk and was so, so sad that he might never recover. So I offered that maybe I could cut some bread into a bunny shape for toast, and he reluctantly obliged. Turns out I cannot come CLOSE to the artistic skill of the Easter bunny, whose precision and dedication apparently match that of a festival chainsaw-log-statue-competition. 

You would think that precision would be difficult with the large awkward mitten hands, but whatever. 

Eventually he agreed to eat said ruined toast and eventually, much to everyone's surprise, he recovered. So we were off to school, where I promptly dropped him off without a snack for his class despite it being our turn to bring snack. Luckily, I was completely unaware of this blunder and it caused no additional morning stress. For me, at least. Sorry, teachers. 

When I picked him up he told me that no one was snack helper. His sweet teachers didn't even call him out on it. He said they had leftover snacks from the cabinet- cheese crackers and graham crackers and gold fish, and I guess whatever else they could muster up. Then I checked the snack calendar and my blissful ignorance was shattered when I saw The Boy's name listed. We had let down a room full of 3 year olds. Oh, the shame! And once I realized and said it out loud, The Boy found an opportunity to be crushed. Just minutes ago he was happy and chatty, but upon hearing the news, he realized he should be disappointed. "I didn't EVEN get to be snack helper!" he wailed, confidently defeated in his newfound injustice. "Oh buddy", I said "don't worry. This is going to happen a lot more times in your life." 

I know you're thinking that we should have called it a day and headed home. But, I'm not prone to learn from my mistakes and decided to take ALL MY (two) CHILDREN to the grocery store. We've done it before, and we've survived. What could possibly go wrong? 

BeYoYo is getting big enough to sit in the buggy, but they hadn't actually done that at the same time yet. I started getting him out of his car seat when my hand touched something wet. A friend on Facebook once said she could sum up the entirety of her mothering experience with the question "why is that wet?" In this case, it was poop. He'd pooped up his back and blown out his diaper and leaked into his car seat. Gag. The Boy was whining for his fruit snacks. BeYoYo was laughing as I was gagging getting everyone out. I handed The Boy the fruit snacks, as he was still recovering from the toast and the snack incidents. We walked inside and straight for the bathroom. I parked the impossible to steer BACB (Big Ass Car Buggy) outside the bathroom and carried BeYoYo in, with The Boy trailing alongside. I let The Boy eat his fruit snacks standing beside the changing table, because I needed a minute, okay? I peeled BeYoYo's clothes off him, wiped him down, changed his diaper, changed his clothes, and got him upright again, all while he was trying his best to flip to his stomach and/or sit up. This took approximately 75 minutes. 

Then the real dilemma presented itself. HOW, pray tell, are you supposed to WASH your HANDS in this situation? I see 4 options. 

1. Hand the baby to the toddler. This does not seem safe, for anyone involved. Poop-on-hands is definitely safer than 3 year old in charge of slightly smaller 8 month old.  

2. Hand the baby to a stranger. There wasn't one, even if I was comfortable with that. 

3. Buckle both kids in the BACB and leave them unattended outside the bathroom while you wash. (I promise you this buggy would not have fit inside the bathroom). 

4. Put the baby on the floor. Considering my high school friend said cleaning the bathroom in his after school job at Publix was worse than his tour in Afghanistan, that didn't seem viable. 

I went with option 5: Don't wash your hands. I procured a baby wipe and thorough gave my hands a bird bath, buckled everyone up in the BACB and went about our business. Later my friend Kati reminded me that I could've buckled BeYoYo in the changing table and left him there while I washed. This never occurred to me, so bird bath it was. Our whole shopping trip I kept getting a whiff of something gross and was continually paranoid that I had poop hands. 

Thankfully we survived the trip and made it home, where I whipped the car in the drive and made a bee line inside for the sink, scrubbing my hands like I was prepping for surgery before going back out to get the groceries and kids. Priorities.