I knew I should have gotten up....

My famous last words are going to be "I know better..."  Today my friend and I took our kids to the zoo.  Aaron was mildly (that's an overstatement I think) interested, but he humored me and somewhat-halfway-sort of looked at the camera when we wanted to take pictures.  All in all we had a fun day. Being the zoo, we walked a bunch, and I really wanted a nap when we got home.  BUT--I didn't take one...I know better.  Bad things happen when I take naps (for example, "someone" may start lighting matches and blowing them out on the couch so they could flap their hands and look at the smoke--things like that happen when I nap).  Another thing that I know better is: when I hear my bathroom door close, and Aaron isn't in my field of vision, it's usually not a good thing.  If this happens, get up.  Don't sit there and do nothing.  I know better.  And of course, tonight my sweet child didn't disappoint. 

Husband and I decided to have a conversation in the living room after dinner.  We're enjoying each others company, talking about the delightful topic of finances (fun, right?).  I hear my bathroom door close.  I know where my other two children are, so my brain makes the connection that Aaron closed the door.  You know those flow charts?  The ones that have a problem in a box and then it flows to two different boxes, one yes and one no, and then it continues down the chain until you have solved your problem?  My head instantly goes to a flow chart to assess the situation.  The first box (after the box that says the problem: my bathroom door closing) is: do I have a visual on Aaron?  If the answer is yes, then I'm all good.  I can continue sitting on my rear end.  If the answer is no, then I have to dig a little deeper.  Next box: Do I currently hear him?  If it's a yes, then it breaks down into: what do I hear? Then I problem solve depending on what sound I hear.  If the answer is no, I don't hear him, well my solution box should say something to the effect of: get off your rear end and walk the 30 feet to see what he's up to. When I come to this solution (and do it) I either avert disaster or confirm that nothing is going on.  The problem is when I ignore this final solution box (well actually the problem is Aaron, but being the bigger person, I'll put the problem on myself).  When I ignore this box, the likelihood of a mess is exponentially increased (I ignored the box tonight).  Given the location of the door that closed, those of you who know Aaron really well can narrow down what type of trouble he was getting into.

After hearing my bathroom door close, (and then consciously ignoring it in order to continue the oh-so-fun finances conversation) it's quiet in the house.  Then I hear the bathroom door close again.  Hmmm...probably not good.  I should not have ignored it.  So I send sister in to see if Aaron has made a mess, of which she promptly comes back to confirm.  Blast!  I don't get up yet because I'm not ready to face what's ahead of me just yet.  He's not in the bathroom anymore, so that means he's not making a mess.  The time comes for me to face the music.  As I walk into my bedroom I smell mango and coconut.  The conversation in my head goes something like this, "Dang it!  The kid got into my body wash.  Ugh!  He had better not have smeared that everywhere, that will be a real mess to clean.  If it's all gone, I'm going to be ticked."  I look on my bed, and he has wiped his body-washed smeared body all over my sheets.  "Are you kidding me?  Now I have to wash all of my bedding!"  I walk into my bathroom and my sense of smell is confused.  The up side is he used the toilet to take care of "business" and didn't got outside (yes, this has been a problem in the past).  The down side is that the smell in my bathroom is Barbasol shaving cream, mango-coconut body wash, and crap.  Yick.  I think that was worse than the actual mess.  As you can see by the pictures, Aaron had a little sensory experience in my bathroom.  Shaving cream everywhere, and the bottom of my tub and floor is slick with body wash.  Sweet.  Now, I try to look at the good in my circumstances, and this is what I came up with tonight: this isn't the worse mess he's made, he went to bed early :), my bathroom is clean (ok, cleaner), I will sleep in clean sheets tonight, the shower curtain that I keep thinking about washing is finally getting washed, my bathmats will be clean, and there is still enough body wash to get me through until the next time I can get to the store that sells it.  The shaving cream is gone, but I'm pretty sure I have another one of those.  And that is how you turn a frown upside down!