Messes and Moms

Today I got to thinking about messes. Specifically how many messes boys make and how many messes I cleaned up yesterday. For documentation's sake and the entertainment of my readers I will list them below. Warning: one of the messes is not for the faint of heart. Proceed with caution!

• We've been having trouble with our kitchen faucet. In fact, there's an entire blog post revolving around the day the cleaning ladies came and ended up soaking wet. Yesterday, the hose got stuck and Mason turned the water on full blast causing a jet stream of water to blast across the kitchen on to the ceiling. He got a horrible case of the giggles - the kind that immobilize you - so he couldn't move to shut it off. I was so stunned that I was a bit paralyzed myself but began screaming and trying to get across the kitchen to shut off the water. Max was in his high chair and in the path of the water arc. He wasn't getting terribly wet, but with all the commotion he was a little upset. I slipped and slided my way to the sink and got it shut down...and proceeded to clean up mess number one.
• After school Mason got a bottle of chocolate milk. He had consumed about half of it by the time we got home, so I asked him to make sure he didn't leave it in the van. We've had several bottles of milk end up "lost" in the van until the stench demanded a search! I went on in the house, and it wasn't long before I could hear Marcus and Mason fighting over whether or not Marcus was going to tell me something. Turns out Mason had dumped the leftover chocolate milk in to a water dispenser we have in the garage. There was no water bottle on top, so the milk went down in to the unit. I did make Mason help me with this clean up, but it makes this list at mess number 2.
• Blake and Marcus went hunting awhile back and Blake had left his muddy, bloody boots by the back door. At some point in the evening, one of the children put the boots on and tracked bloody mud through the living room. Lovely. At least it was dry and fairly easy to clean up...as if there's an upside to bloody mud in the living room. This was mess number 3.
• Now...I will confess that mess number 4 was my fault. But since it was a full blown mess, it makes the list all the same. I left a glass on the table within Max's reach. He got ahold of it and threw it at the television. It hit the table below and shattered. Mess number 4.

It must have been about this time that I simply sent all the children to bed. It's too risky to have them up and moving about. Being a mom is exhausting!