Mess of the Week: The “Let’s Make Up for Lost Time” Edition

It has been a busy week here this week.  It was the first full week of school for Ya Ya, the first week of preschool for Mr. Sneaky Pants, The Banana's birthday, lots of fall piano students were back for the first time since last spring, it was the start of church activities and swimming lessons, and we had the last two soccer games of summer.  Dr. Peds was out on a canoe trip over the weekend and worked most of the week, so by this morning I was ready for a bit of relaxation.  I needed a morning without an agenda, and miraculously enough, I didn't need to go anywhere.  So, after putting Ya Ya on the bus for school, I crawled in my bed with a book about teaching piano lessons.  

The Banana joined me with her own set of books of all shapes and sizes, reading all sorts of crazy stories to me.  Mr. Sneaky Pants joined us after a bit, snuggling under a blanket pretending to be a rabbit.  It was a foggy morning  It was lovely.  And I fell asleep.  

And that's when things really started up.  I woke up to the smell of permanant marker.  That's never a good thing.  I guard permanent markers with a passion, but sometimes stray ones get loose, and The Banana had found one.  She was writing important messages all over sticky note pads.  One pad belonged to her father, and was a list of even more important notes about patients, who hopefully have now been discharged from the hospital.  The other pad of sticky notes had notes of my own on them.  Thankfully, and I am oh so grateful, the permanent marker did not stray away from the sticky notes.  

However, when I squinted a bit, I noticed that her face was full of goop.  She was looking the other way, hoping I wouldn't notice.  She had also mangled a tube of benedryl cream on her father's night stand, covering all of her skin with the cream.  She claimed it was to help her mosquito bites from last week.  There was cream in her hair, next to her eyes, and all over her arms and in the creases of her neck.

Just a few minutes after that, Mr. Sneaky Pants came screeching in, screaming.  The Banana had stolen all the paper money Ya Ya had made for him to fit in his paper wallet.  The Banana told me she needed her own money. She had sealed all of his money into her pink paper purse Ya Ya made her, and closed it all up with extra strength packing tape.    Mr. Sneaky Pants was screaming at the top of his lungs!  "My MONEY!  My MONEY!  She took all my MONEY!"  

"Go make some more money of your own!"  I told him.  There was whining and complaining about how he couldn't cut out squares, and couldn't write numbers like Ya Ya.  It was dramatic, but he eventually did calm down and make several sheets of money, so that he could be richer than The Banana.

Crisis averted, I went back to reading about teaching piano lessons.  Soon both of them came running in, with packing tape covering their mouths and across their eyeballs and noses.  The were "sculpting themselves into aliens."  That was very nice, I said, and I gave them two more pieces of packing tape each, and then got up to put my packing tape away.  That stuff is expensive.  

While I was in the office, I decided to check my email.  Upon finishing that, I walked by the bathroom.  They had decided to "help" me by cleaning the bathroom.  This involved squirting every surface of the bathroom with a spray bottle of Papa Richard's nontoxic enzyme cleaner.  Everything was soaked. Everything.  Plus, they had unwound two entire boxes of dental floss and emptied the whole basket of bathroom accessories.  

I sent them downstairs, and cleaned up the bathroom.  

Then I went downstairs to plan lunch, and found them munching on hot dog buns that their father had just gotten last night and had big plans to use this evening.  They ate half of each bun.  

And that's when I decided that maybe I just should have left the house after all.  I mean, really!