Part Pig-Pen, Part Linus

My little man is a mess. Some days I feel like I spend half my life following him around, a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. A washcloth attached to my belt and a sponge in my back pocket. A tissue box tucked up under an arm and a small trash bin under the other. Something like a one-man-band. Only I’m a one-woman-cleaning-service.

Ethan doesn’t realize he’s a mess, of course. He goes through life with little recognition of what is messy versus what is clean. How he manages to drop every single crumb on the floor I’ll never know. Or drop his sippy cup yet again. Or simply leave toys trailing behind wherever he’s been. And while he’s usually congenial enough to clean up when I tell him to, sometimes I have to wonder why I bother. After all, nearly as soon as the blocks are picked up, the train set is scattered every which way. I don’t know how people survive being fulltime maids. There are many times I feel driven towards insanity.

I suppose, in all honesty, he may not be quite the mess I think he is. After all, he’s following in the footsteps of Emry who is simply not a mess. She was the rare child who never needed a drop cloth while she ate. I can count on one hand the number of times she has spilled a snack. If she gets a toy out, she usually picks it up without my even telling her. It’s a rare day if she has toys scattered through the house. Shoes come off at the door, clothes are put in her drawers. With a firstborn like that, almost any second born is bound to be considered a walking disaster.

But while he often seems like Pig Pen, at other times he is more of a Linus. At least, when it comes to his blanket. If he’s hurt, the blanket is his comfort. If he’s out of sorts, the blanket must be found. If he’s watching a movie or reading a story, the blanket must be tucked around him. So, as you can imagine, washing said blanket is always a challenge. Today I had no option. He woke up with a diaper that had somehow exploded. Everything got stripped off and tossed immediately into the wash. As we were heading out the door later thismorning, I took the blanket from the washer as soon as it was complete and tossed it the dryer with only a few items. It needed to be dried before naptime and I wouldn’t have time to run the dryer when we got back. He saw me throw his blanket in the dryer and pulled it right out. I told him it needed to be dried, put it back in and told him he would have to wait. He stood right in front of the dryer as I started it, looking through the door quite forlornly:

This lasted all of about 20 seconds before he looked up at me and asked, “Is it dry, Mama?”

I nudged him along to some other distraction, but as we passed the dryer on our way out the door about 20 minutes later, he stopped and asked again. Thankfully, it was! And so, the blanket went with us.