How Does Your Morning Start?

Oh how I wish I started my day out quietly sipping my coffee and catching up online, or reading, or watching the leaves blow in the wind. Just a moment to myself before the day starts. What a luxurious start to my day that would be. Instead, it starts with me being woken up by either the baby, or one of my two toddlers way earlier then I'd like. At this point I ALWAYS get mad at myself for staying up way too late the night before and vow to go to bed earlier tonight. There's a round of diaper changes, a congratulations and mini-celebration for "Mr. Trouble" if he made it through the night with a dry pull-up. Usually someone is crabby because they were woken up by a sibling. Then "Mr. Trouble" starts bringing me various foods one-by-one asking if he can have them for breakfast. Each time I tell him, just a minute, I have to finish whatever it is I'm doing and then I will be down to feed him. So he leaves the food with me, goes downstairs, then comes back up with another. I wonder if anyone else has three boxes of cereal in their bathroom? Sometimes CamCam follows along in this game. He usually wants Parmesan cheese for breakfast.

Whether before breakfast, during, or just after, there is ALWAYS a meltdown. One day it's because "a-pa-ju" meant apple juice, and I gave him milk. Next day it's because "a-pa-ju" meant milk and I gave him apple juice. Sometimes it's because as he was walking over to the table, one cheerio fell out of his bowl, so now we have to throw the entire bowl across the room. It could be because I handed him his drink first, then his food, and he wanted the food first, then his drink. Or maybe I had the audacity to not let him eat Parmesan cheese for breakfast. I've learnt to ignore these little fits, it actually makes me smile at how much rage can be in such a tiny body one minute, and then be full of smiles and laughter the next.

There's ALWAYS an "event". This is the part I'd LOVE to do without. It's always a big mess I have to clean up. An entire box of cereal dumped on the floor. Their dad left his 1/2 filled coffee cup on the table, and CamCam gets to it before me. The old coffee filter full of grounds happens to be on top of the garbage, and CamCam pulls it out.

But today was one of the worst. Breakfast was over, "Mr. Trouble" and CamCam went downstairs to play. I'm sitting up here, having my coffee, and I actually thought to myself how nice it was that they were playing toys for once. I even enjoyed the view outside for a minute! Then "Mr. Trouble" came up to tell me a story about the dark, and monsters, and dad scaring the monsters, and I asked him what CamCam was doing.

"CamCam's cleaning the potty."

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Oh please no!!!! I RUN downstairs and see CamCam elbow deep in potty water with a scrubber in one hand and a bottle of 409 in the other. He is soaked in potty water. The bathroom floor is a lake. Ugh, gross, gag! Now I'd LOVE to say that my bathroom is pristine clean, so this isn't that big of a deal. But I have 5 kids, so there isn't much in my house that is pristine clean. And this is "the" bathroom. The one that I never use, just The Dada and occasionally the 2 boys use it. So I never clean it unless we're expecting company. It's the one that I feel The Dada should be cleaning, since he's the one mainly using it and yet he hardly ever does. It's a mini-battle to see who gets the most grossed out by it first and caves and cleans it. Apparently it takes a lot to gross him out. THIS is the toilet that CamCam has been playing in/cleaning for the past few minutes! I grab his sopping wet body, and run him upstairs to the shower trying to not let any of the yuckiness drip along the way. He thinks this is great- he loves playing in water and so he got to play in a mini-bath and now he gets to play in a big-bath. I'm quite sure he's making a mental note to do this again tomorrow.

And now excuse me, as I have to go and clean up a yucky lake of toilet water. Ewwwwwww.