Poop: September 7, 2012

Last Saturday night somebody pooped in the tub.  Only one of my kids ever does it.  I don't want to say who lest they be branded with that characteristic, which is not at all defining even though it was really inconvenient at the time.  When I do bathe all three kids at once, getting out is an intricate and complicated dance that involves rinsing, toweling, lotioning, and not getting more than an elbow away from anybody in case they slip.  Not when poop arrives on the scene.  I turned on the shower, held everyone up under the flow to be rinsed, and punted each to the bath mat where all three took off for the twins' room naked and shivering.  They found the bin of the girls' socks, dumped it out, and started tossing the little sock balls up in the air again and again.  It took twenty minutes to lay hands on each of my children, sniff them, dry them, dress them, pick up the soggy sock balls, and safely install the kids in the pen so I could return to the bathroom to clean up the mess.

I opened the bathroom cabinet to take out an extra bath towel.  Out came twenty little brown pellets.

More poop.

Not the kind I am constantly wiping off things/people and throwing in the Diaper Champ.

Mouse poop.

Deep breath.

I replaced the towel.  I closed the cabinet door, and the bathroom door behind me.  I washed my hands.  Really well.  Then I let my kids out of the pen and we played tea party picnic until it was time to go to bed.  As Carrie and Melina play-ate pie and Devon tipped the teapot to hear the sound it made my mind filled with unpleasant images of giant rodents crawling through the walls and coming out at night to glean the Cheerio dust from the living room carpets. 

Craig and Devon played "Little Mousie Looking for a Housie" (Not Here? tickle tickle tickle  Not here?  tickle tickle How about here? tickle tickle).  I wanted to break in and say "Yes, indeed, they are looking and apparently their search led them to our house where they're camped out between the extra hair dryer and the bottle of 409."  I didn't bring it up until all three kids were in bed.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know that my family is going through a phase where absolutely NO cleaning can take place when any of the kids are awake.

I already spent two nap hours that afternoon on the most comprehensive cleaning job possible with young children at home.  This has been aptly compared to brushing your teeth while eating oreos.  Ten minutes after the kids wake up, the house doesn't look much different.  It capped off a really long day where it was a struggle to make everyone play nice.  As the kids were stepping into the bath and putting foam letters into their mouths and blowing fistfuls of bubbles at each other I was thinking I would enjoy a few moments of fun playtime with the kids.  I was looking ahead to picking up a few last stray toys and collapsing on the couch in front of the Netflix dvd that's been sitting on our bookshelf all week.

I was thinking that I just really didn't have much left in me at that point.

Apparently I was wrong.

I DID have it in me to put the kids calmly and lovingly to bed, break the news of the infestation to Craig, and spend the next three hours cleaning up the mess.

We googled "mouse poop", stared at pictures of mouse poop, and measured the poop with an actual ruler to make sure it was just mouse poop and not rat poop, squirrel poop, snake poop, etc.

We found the roll of toilet paper that had been shredded by tiny mouse claws and lots more poop, but no actual mice.  Whew.

We washed the extra towels in super hot water with color safe bleach over and over, and then pondered throwing them out and buying new towels anyway.

We put on rubber gloves and threw away a box of miscellaneous junk that smelled like mice.

We scolded the cat for slacking off on a job she's performed competently since she joined our family eight years ago, and then felt bad because it's not like she really feels she can roam the house much anymore.  I wonder if the kids seem to her like a bit of an infestation.  We don't let her do anything about THEM.

We washed the bath mat and my old Caboodle in Ajax with Bleach in the kitchen sink.  Every woman my age probably had a Caboodle to hold her makeup and hair products in junior high and high school.  As it soaked, I read my personalization on the inside of the top cover:  "Krista Weimer-- and NO ONE ELSE!"  My, how things have changed, and not just the maiden name.  It's hard to even remember a time where my things belonged to me and no one else.  Lately anything mine from my coffee cup to my shoes to my iphone gets taken down off the table by the toddler and passed to the walking twin and on to the crawling twin.  Even before I had kids my sewing scissors disappeared for a few months.  I found out Craig was using them in the greenhouse to cut grass to feed his research caterpillars.

I held the megaroll of tape for Craig as we tried to plug the hole around the pipes that the mice had certainly used to come in.
I brought out the bleach and cleaned the poopy tub and every surface in the entire bathroom until my nostrils burned.

Some days I'm spread so thinly I feel like a jar of peanut butter covering a football field.  Then I find out I need enough of me to cover the stadium, the parking lot, and the highway interchange, so I grab a knife and I just start spreading some more.

The most dedicated workaholic at the most exhaustive job still can't compare her schedule to that of a mother.  Most moms find their world completely rocked by their first child.  More come, things get even busier, and by some miracle we adjust.

Multiples moms have extra challenges.  "When baby sleeps, Mommy sleeps," goes the old saying.  Another multiples mom friend of mine rewrote it for her family.  I agree: "When babies sleep, Mommy works like a crazy person so that everyone can eat, wear clothes, burn off their energy in meaningful activities so nobody gets hurt, and live free of the risk of catching a third-world poor sanitation disease from the growing stack of dirty diapers on the floor."

Needs are many and constant.  Our store of energy seems unequal to the task.  Many of us have given up exercise and cut corners on nutrition because we're too busy with kids.  Yet, somehow we make it.

I make it.  That Netflix dvd sits on the shelf for a few more days, a dusty monument to a time when Craig and I could schedule in some entertainment.  If I do get a few quiet minutes, I sit and think in a quiet house with nobody whining for me.  I realize I've become a person that thirteen-year-old girl writing on her Caboodle would hardly recognize.

But here's the thing: I like myself.

Yes, my schedule is ridiculously demanding, but I do more with a day than I ever thought possible.

Yes, children are needy, but there's nothing like being the person that God put on this earth to meet their needs.

Last night I kissed the kids goodnight at 9:30 and started cleaning.  At 11:30 Devon and I were still carrying on a conversation in snatches every time I passed his room.  He found it hard to sleep with me making so much noise.  (It begs the question: When am I ever going to clean the house, if I CAN'T when they're awake and I CAN'T when they're asleep?)  At midnight Melina woke up crying and getting her up woke Carrie and so the three of us ate fish crackers off the coffee table.  We're trying to help Melina's walking catch up to Carrie's, so I did laps around the kitchen and living room holding Melina's hand as she walked and Carrie led the way.

When I tucked them back in at 2:30 I was relieved that Devon had been up so late, too.  Surely that would mean that everyone would sleep in?

Nope.

Devon stumbled into the kitchen as Craig was making the coffee at 7:10 am.

By the time I joined him at 7:30 he was in fine form, looking for new ways to try out his Favorite Word of the Week.

"Should we make the oaties?"

"YEAH!"

"Do you need a sippy?"

"YEAH!"

"Did you sleep well after Mommy stopped making so much noise?"

"YEAH!"

 I suppressed a yawn and made breakfast, Devon expressing wholehearted approbation every time I picked up a spoon.  It was okay.  Really.

I'm the Mommy.

I got this!