All In The Line Of Duty

Is it just me or are there some days when parenting feels like war? Day in and day out you are battling with a teenager, a pre-adolescent, a toddler. Whatever stage you are in parenting is hard.

This week I can talk about it but let me tell you after it happened I was NOT a happy mom. It all started with Rachel coloring all over the wall. Such a mess. She now knows that she can't color on walls - again; not like this was the first time she had been told not to color on the walls!.

So, what was Rachel up to last week?

Well, if you can't draw on the walls with marker what else is there?

Toothpaste.

Oh yes. I realized that she wasn't in the basement like I thought she was so I went looking for her only to find her in my bathroom covering the walls (and everything else) with toothpaste.

Huge mess.

I sent her to her room and went back to clean up only to realize that I could not find the toothpaste. In fact, I was missing two tubes. There was no toothpaste in the bathroom at all.

I went back to get Rachel.

I brought her back into the bathroom and asked where the toothpaste was. She opened the toilet seat and pointed inside. If only it were that simple.

Inside were two tubes of toothpaste and about 10 toothbrushes. Nice. I had her remove them all and throw them away.

Problem was it still wasn't the two tubes of toothpaste I was missing. They were no where to be found.

So I ask Rachel if she flushed them and she had. She'd emptied and then flushed two tubes of toothpaste. Clogged the toilet quite completely.

Kirk and I spent a good hour removing the toilet from the floor, cleaning it out and then re-sealing it. Not a fun time at all.

But it did make this week easier when I was vacuuming up fish food from every crevice of Caleb's room after Julianna tried to "help" and feed the fish. Mostly I'm just grateful the fish are still alive and she managed to get very little in the bowl. Although I have to say that fish food is really gross and cleaning it up is a disgusting pain but I'll take it over toothpaste and clogged toilets.

I know some day this will all be in the past and I'll miss it but right now it feels like I'm walking through the trenches every day. But I'll continue to do - not for the love of my country but for the love of my kids :) Who are still all adorably cute by the way!