Kids and Clean Cannot Co-exist

I am a very clean person.  Boringly clean. Disturbingly clean. I-need-a-life clean. If I am feeling frazzled or stressed, I clean. For some reason, herding and purging dirt makes me feel grounded and in control of my life.  I wish eating vegetables and jogging made me feel in control of my life, but it doesn't work half as well as cleaning. Or eating chocolate and drinking wine.

Since I live alone, keeping my place organized and spotless is fairly easy. So is eating chocolate and drinking wine. I was so grounded a tree would be jealous. Then my sister had to go and have kids and just throw my life into chaos.

Jay, 5 and Blake, 22 mths.

I used to try and fight the chaos when my nephews would come stay the night with me. I'd run around behind them wiping things down and picking things up; I ran the vacuum so much that my cats now suffer from shell shock. Finally, I accepted a modified version of a clean and orderly house--modified being there would be no clean and no orderly. After a night with one or with both boys, my place could serve as a set for hoarders. Toys would blanket the floor; Cheerios, Goldfish crackers, and God-knows-what-else jammed between seat cushions and clinging to carpet fibers could supply me and my cats snacks for days. And when Jay began using the toilet, my bathroom became a bio-hazard.

My one feeble attempt to maintain some kind of order when my nephews visit is during bath-time.  I know; it's like trying to stay on a diet in Las Vegas, but logic has never been my strong suit.

To prep for bath time, I first remove all my beauty products from the tub and put them out-of-reach. Then, I line the bathroom floor with towels, because I learned quickly kids scare water so much it will leap out of the tub in order to escape them. I load the tub with toys, water and bubbles and then dump the kids in to play, hopefully long enough for me to savor my wine instead of shooting it like Tequila.

Last Saturday night, I had both nephews. I went through my preparation, got the kids situated but before I had my fingers wrapped around the stem of my glass I heard Jay call, "Auntie!"

I headed back to the bathroom to him leaping from the tub, announcing, "I have to poop!"

He jumped onto the pot before I could get his kid potty-seat down (the only thing keeping him from falling in were braced hands and skinny arms).  Even though I was focused on keeping Jay from falling into the toilet, I noticed some suspicious movement from his brother, Blake, in the tub. Before I could further investigate, Jay pulled my attention back to him by saying, "Auntie, I have something bad to tell you."

Awesome.

"I pooped a little in the tub."

If you have not had the pleasure of fishing poop out of a tub, let me tell you it is probably the most disgusting thing I've ever had to do. Ever.

Well, Blake had handled that for me. In a tub filled with at least 100 toys bobbing beneath a mountain of suds, that toddler managed to find the only, small nugget of shit. Kids can't find their shoes, their homework, their pants, their parents, their ass--but this one can find the only thing in the damn tub I didn't want him to touch.

Blake squished the nugget into a pancake, shrugged, and then smeared it on the wall.

Let's just say we did a Bath Time, Take 2.  And I did shoot my wine like Tequila.