Our fourth tiny human is tall for his age, seems to be more curious than his three older sisters, and he’s even advanced quicker than his sisters (gross-motor-wise). He’s a year-and-a-half old currently, and last night he reminded me just how quickly they can make messes in a short amount of time.
I walked out of our bedroom and into the living room with his pajamas in hand and he was looking up at me. He seemed so proud of himself as he looked up at me with bright blue eyes and his adorable little smile! I smiled back at him and then I looked around him and realized what he had done.
Tiny human managed to snag the little box of Ragu Cheese Sauce off of the kitchen counter and pour it all over the living room floor and the rug. First off, I’m not thrilled that Ragu switched from a glass jar of cheese sauce to a carton-style box, but that’s another story that I’m sure isn’t worth writing about.
I was already exhausted and I was beyond ready for bed at this point. All I know is that evolution knew exactly what they were doing when they made little kids so stinking cute! Little man was grinning from ear to ear as I grabbed one of my Norwex cleaning cloths to try to clean up him and the mess so I could get him ready for bed so that I too could get to bed. Every time that I’d go to rinse out the cloth, he’d grin at me and look at the rest of the mess with a seemingly mocking smirk and I feel like if he could talk, he’d have said, ‘you missed a spot.’
In all the random early childhood education classes that I’ve taken over the years, they never seem to really cover what life will be like once you’re outnumbered by tiny humans at home. Yes, you expect kids to spill drinks, paint, food, etc. But you’re never fully prepared to clean up certain things. Our kids can make a mess with pretty much anything…
Recently we’ve had to clean up about five pounds of kinetic sand in the dining room, scrub paint out of the carpet, get nail polish off of our kid’s bodies, clean diaper cream off of a window after your kids used it as finger paint, try to salvage a toy that they painted with nail polish, scrub poop off of the crib because they took their diaper off during nap time. I swear, our kids must have a sensor for when we’re occupied elsewhere!
I wonder if they seriously think, “Oh, dad’s helping my sisters with homework, let’s paint with toothpaste in the bathroom!” “Mom’s tending to the garden, let’s paint the patio furniture with mud!” “Dad’s on the couch with the babies because it’s nap time, let’s open up all of the snacks on the pantry shelves and leave them strung all over the basement floor and cram some into the toy box!”
On a side note, I’m a Norwex Independent Consultant, and I have found some of the products helpful in managing our tiny human messes. If you’d like to check out my site for Norwex, feel free to view it here. I’m not big on sales kind of stuff, I mostly maintain my active status just for the consultant discount. So just don’t be surprised if I mention it here or there. Like I said in our first post, cleaning is something I enjoy when I’m in the mood to do it. (Again, keywords, “When I’m in the mood”)