No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk

Welcome to Dumpsville baby. Population...ME.

No, I haven't been dumped, but everything else in my house has been dumped, spilled, tossed, thrown up, you name it.

Mess week kicked off last Thursday morning. It was grocery day and I had all 3 kids ready to be out the door by 9:00am. Dressed, hair fixed, diaper bag packed, everything was ready but shoes. A feat only appreciated by those with multiple children. My children are all especially young and helpless. Not one of them can get dressed by himself yet. Parker may be old enough but he can't seem to get past the getting undressed step before he's running around the house in the buff yelling "OOO LA LA" and doing poses in front of the mirror. So 3 kids and 1 mom by 9:00am is amazing. I was coming down the hall with shoes and decided to take a little detour to the bathroom before we left. And in my moments of being helpless and indisposed, Parker managed to dump TWO GALLONS of milk on the kitchen floor.

Two gallons looks like a lot more on the floor than it does in the cartons. It filled my kitchen and overflowed into the living room. Reid thought it was great and was playing slip 'n' slide on the kitchen floor. He was practically swimming in it and drenched from head to toe. Parker slipped in it a few times and was soaking from waist down. And my dog was lying in it; trying to drink as much as possible before I cleaned it up. I stripped the boys down and shoved them in the tub...tracking milk through the entire house. By the time the floor was cleaned and the boys bathed, it was time for Grayden to eat and the boys needed lunch, then naps. It was afternoon before I made it to the store. I have a small window of time to get out of the house before this sequence of events prevents me from leaving.

If only that were the worst of mess week. Among the many things dumped this week...the usual toys, several bowls of cold cereal, dog food, a bag of cheese puffs (leaving a nice powdering of orange grease to clean up), half a bathtub full of water, a container of ball shaped sprinkles that I'm still finding in every crack and corner of my kitchen (the kind with a separator with four colors of sprinkles in one...that's a lot of sprinkles), and marsh mellows just to name a few. I even found Reid with a open container of sour cream and a spatula. Which doesn't have to be a mess if he could have kept it in his mouth, but not Reid. And yesterday, I made the mistake of leaving my bedroom (where I had been folding a mess-week mountain worth of laundry) without locking the door behind me. In just seconds, the boys managed to have more than half the laundry unfolded and on the floor. Awesome. 2 hours wasted.

Here's the kicker...Saturday night, Parker woke up throwing up followed 24 hours later by Reid and Grayden. The throwing up lasted 2-3 days per kid with the diarrhea right behind. (Gross, I know. But it is socially acceptable for mothers of young children to discuss poop.) It's amazing to me how different three boys can be. Parker needs to be coddled when he's sick. He lays on the couch demanding me to wait on him hand and foot. Reid wanders the house whining. And Grayden...the sweet little thing is as pleasant as can be. I would hold his little heaving body over a sink or bowl or toilet (whatever was momentarily free) while he was throwing up. He would finish and then just look at me and smile. We rarely heard a peep from the smiley guy all week.

It looked like the stomach bug was on its way out as of yesterday...besides the lingering diarrhea. The kids were running around and contributing as much as they could to mess week before it was over. We have come full circle and today was grocery day again. I hadn't left this sick house past the garbage can since Saturday and was actually looking forward to it (silly me). All was well when we left the house. And grocery shopping was going well except the normal groceries that Reid likes to throw out of the cart. And then it happened...Parker began throwing up again...on my groceries.

I reach into my diaper bag...which is typically well stocked and can possibly even rival that of Mary Poppins. I know I have plastic bags in there, but I also know they are inside a small zippered compartment inside the bag and there just wasn't time. The first thing I can find is a diaper. They're absorbent right? So there I was in the Walmart meat department, up to my elbows in throw-up, holding an open diaper in front of my 3 year old's mouth. AHHH...motherhood at it's finest. I wish I could say that was the first time one of my kids threw up in Walmart, but it wasn't the first time and probably won't be the last.

I got the diaper there in enough time to stop him from ruining a cart full of groceries. I think he just got me, a box of Cheerios, a carton of eggs and some BBQ sauce. I cleaned every last grocery off with Lysol when I got home just to be safe. No, I didn't just leave my cart of groceries and rush out the door...although I was tempted. It's far too big of an ordeal to leave the house. I wasn't going home empty handed. The guy behind the counter at the meat department was not at all helpful. He kept interrupting me to ask about the turkey I had just ordered. Did he not see the diaper? I certainly didn't care at that moment how he sliced my turkey. He gave me the wrong amount of meat but I wasn't about to complain. I had him call maintenance (because it certainly didn't occur to him to do that) and I high-tailed it out of there. Thank goodness for diaper wipes and Germ-X hand sanitizer.

Parker has now resumed his place on the couch for another Muppet marathon afternoon. And just when I thought I would make it a day without the constant running of the washing machine...it's back on.

As mess week comes to a close, I can only imagine what surprises the boys have in store for me tonight. With a week like this, I'm sure they have a slam-bang finish cooked up.