The Incident

Yesterday, on what promised to be a beautiful Saturday morning, I arose from my bed to the sound of the dustbuster. Here is a little confession that may get me in trouble if I'm ever nominated for Mother-of-the-Year, but I want to own up to my negligence. I was in bed, trying to get a few more moments of sleep after having been up several times that night with a teething/constipated baby Eden. Herb had gotten up with the boys, as he usually does and gotten them situated (breakfast while they watch their favorite cartoons on the laptop). Then he left to play a much-deserved game of tennis. I tried to ignore the fact that I really ought to have been getting up and taking care of the kids. Ohhh, but I was sooo tired and my bed sooo comfortable and afterall, Max and Lincoln are usually transfixed by their favorite cartoons.

Any guesses as to which direction this is going?

At the sound of the dustbuster I knew my moments of lingering sleep were over. Someone was trying to clean-up their tracks before I appeared on the scene. My kids have had plenty of practice using the dustbuster to clean-up their messes so I half expected that I would walk into the living room and discover Lincoln vacuming up Cheerios strewn about the floor. If only I had been so lucky. Instead, to my immense dismay, the living room floor was covered in Tide laundry detergent. The box, the very large box, that had once been full, lay on it's side, empty but for a few stubborn granules. In the middle of it all was Lincoln, half ready to bolt, half ready to laugh depending upon my reaction. One section of the carpet was entirely covered in white, the carpet wasn't even visible. The couch had detergent all along it's cushions and seams. Even then, as I stared at the scene before me, I didn't comprehend the amount of time it would take to get all the detergent out of the carpet. I would have taken a picture of it all, but I was just too mad.

To my credit, I did not raise my voice or hand to Lincoln, just sent him to his room for a very long time. To his credit, he stayed there.

Four hours of vacuming, wiping down furniture, moving furniture, cleaning out clogged vacums and steam cleaning carpets was all it took to clean-up five minutes of three-year-old fun. Will this little incident cure me of my life-time habit of sleeping-in? Probably not, but at least next time I'll think twice about it.