Austen and I bonded over poop (sorry, Tyson, I don't feel like typing '# 2' a thousand times, plus 'poop' is funnier)
Austen had an accident. He hadn't done this in probably a year, so I knew it must have been pretty embarrasing for him so I was trying to handle it with grace and style. I told him to stand still and let me carefully pull his jammies and nunders off. The jammies came easy, then the poopy nunders. Well, they left some residue so I carefully placed the poopy underpants on the LEDGE of the toilet bowl and flushed the toilet (it had some pee pee in it-Austen doesn't always flush) because I had to rinse the underwear out and didn't want to do it in pee pee water. As soon as Austen saw me he screamed and grabbed the underwear. He thought I was flushing them down the toilet. I reached for the underwear and tried to reason with him that I was not flushing them down because they weren't IN the toilet, I just wanted to flush the pee pee. Finally he hands the underwear over and I begin the cleanup process. At this time, the toilet bowl has refilled with new pee-free water so I drop the underwear IN the toilet, to be soaked and plunged and retrieved in a moment, hopefully poop free. Well, you can imagine what happens next... The underwear are now wet with toilet water and very poopy, wet poop, and Austen is apparently terrified that I am on a mission to flush his favorite Spidey underwear. So he reaches in a grabs them before I can stop him. I try to grab them out of his hands, he swings them around in an effort to keep them away from me. So at this point, he is erratically swinging wet, poopy underwear all over the bathroom and the poop is flying. Literally. It is now on the sink, counter, floor, Austen, (who I have yet to clean from his initial encounter with the poop) the stool, the toilet, me and the rug. Oh, and did I mention that we are both screaming at this point? He is screaming in fear and anger that I am flushing his underwear and I am screaming simply because I don't know what else to do-I want to reason with him, but there just hasn't been the time. I want to laugh, because this is some funny stuff but I don't, I don't know why. So I scream. And I am not talking about "screaming" a.k.a. yelling or speaking loudly as if to reprimand, I am screaming. At the top of my lungs, as is Austen. Finally, FINALLY, I stop screaming and begin to reason with the child. I do this by eventually winning the poopy underwear flinging contest and I snag them. I then show him, step by step, how one dunks and swirls poopy underwear in the toilet to get the poop out. Plop, the poop falls in to the toilet. "See," I say "THAT is what I wanted to do." "Oh," he replies, "I am so sorry, mommy." Then I cleaned Austen. Then I cleaned the bathroom.
Uncle Chris the Baker, this is what my kids call Chris Baker. I think it is funny.
Henner says "blelly" instead of "belly" I think this is adorable.
I babysat 2 additional boys overnight last week. This went very smoothly and the destruction was kept to a minimum with the exception of two incdents.
1. Andrew convinced Austen that the best way to retrieve the baseball bats off of the patio roof was to throw everything else in the backyard up on to the patio roof. This includes, toys, tools, balls, and even lawn chairs. I walked outside to see what all the ruckus was and to my astonishment, the patio roof looked like the patio. I wanted to be so stern and mad but all I could do was laugh. And laugh. And laugh. I retreived the ladder and sent Austen up there with the admonition to NEVER EVER CLIMB UP THERE ALONE EVER and let him throw all the stuff down. I did not go myself for two reasons, one, I am notoriously bad on ladders and two, I didn't think the aluminum roof would support my fluffy self. He threw everything down, and before we learned better, threw a chair onto the patio. It shattered. Then I told him to throw the remaining chairs on to the grass. They survived. We all survived. Barely.
2. The second incident was regarding a certain formerly battery operated crocodile. I wasn't there but I have assembled the following theory for what occurred. Andrew asked why the crocodile didn't work anymore. (because we got it wet) Austen said some kind of nonsense to the effect of "I broke it." Andrew said he thought he could fix it if we could just take it apart and look at the wires. How do I know wires were mentioned? We shall see. Later the two boys came upstairs with the tail end of a decapitated crocodile. I was not too alarmed, it was a stupid broken toy. The next day, Tyson was steaming because of all the destruction that any child + our child manage to get into when not closely observed. So I asked Austen why they took the crocodile apart. "The warriors," he told me. The warriors? "The warriors" I got him to say this several times, trying to figure out what he was talking about. Not getting it, I asked him to show me these warriors. He did. They were wires. Wires from inside the crocodile. I can only imagine the thoughts that went through his head when Andrew said that there were warriors inside the crocodile. I am guessing he could not wait to break that baby open and see these elusive "crocodile warriors."
