24-hour notice

I gave notice today. I'll stick around for another 24 hours, then I'm done. Just DONE (for a couple of days anyway.) Today did not end on a good note, and tomorrow I'll start travelling to get to the Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) convention. I'm taking Jon and Ben to stay with my Dad (Mom is with my brother's family who now has a new little boy!!) Then I'll take Maddie and Will to Allen's parents. After that, I'll meet my girlfriends at a hotel and we fly out bright and early Thursday morning. Allen is still working long hours. :(

I decided to write to remember it. Someday, maybe 20 or 30 years from now, one of my kids will call me to vent frustrations and complain about a rough day with my grandchild. This will be one of the stories I bring up and laugh and think to myself, "You deserve it." Today's "Event" (that's what we'll call it for now) started after nap time. I was returning an email to a friend and loving that my kids were upstairs playing so nicely together. It had been about 20 minutes since anyone had gotten hit or bit or pinched, so I was enjoying the quiet.

I decided to go tell the kids how happy I was that they were playing nicely, and I found Ben completely naked kneeling on top of the dresser (about 4 feet tall). The other three were on the floor meowing at him and cheering him on (to what? I'll never know.) I discovered white and orange gunk everywhere, and here is what I learned.

A full tube of diaper cream goes a really long way. It is enough to make two little boys have gray spiked hair, enough to cover two twin-sized comforters, enough to cover three shirts and two pair of shorts, enough to make a large pattern on the carpet in two rooms, enough to coat part of two walls and three bed posts, enough to cover most of a bathroom counter and slick the tile floor, enough to make two diapers completely disappear. White I was cleaning it up one of the missing diapers didn't do its duty, so I had to clean up another mess.

Later, I found butt cream that had been squeezed onto the top of the door. The door was then shut, so there was cream on three sides of the door and three sides of the molding. Unlikely as it is, it was later explained to me that Jon had a foot on each of the doorknobs (inside and outside the room) Then the kids pushed the door all the way open and that's how cream got onto the wall adjacent the door. It doesn't explain how it ended up about three inches above the door. Jon just isn't quite that tall (about seven and a half feet from the floor.)

I asked each of the kids separately what happened and got eight different stories between the four kids. But you know what REALLY scared them? When I discovered all this mess and the many explanations, I smiled and calmly told them to clean it up. I smiled when I told them calmly that the disciplining would happen later. I smiled and calmly told them I needed to calm down (that REALLY confused them, and I could tell they were getting worried and they don't even know what "insane" means.) Then I smiled and calmly went to call a friend. I really needed to calm down.

I bathed the kids, fed them, and put them to bed. I found cream on the bottom of pillows, in the armpits of some stuffed toys, under the bed, on other wall. In the end, the cream that was supposed to put a protective coating on chapped rears didn't really soothe their sore butts.