What Can Happen in 3 Minutes...



You know you’re the parent of an active toddler when…

The following things occur in a three minute time span:

You are trying like mad to get dinner made (butternut squash grilled cheese((another blog post in and of itself…so good)) and your baby starts pulling on your legs and whining. You pick him up in order to placate him, when he immediately starts whining and pushing to get down. You put him down and he immediately repeats the whining and pulling. You feed him a couple of bites of squash and since his toys are no longer interesting to him, you give him the nearest non-toy to play with: a closed bottle of allergy pills (don’t trip; it was child proof).

You turn your back for a split second to ensure a sandwich isn’t burning and in an instant, the pill jar is no longer rattling. You turn around and the child has something in his mouth and something in his balled up fist. As you get to him he swallows the unknown substance and you subsequently feel relieved when you realize it was cat food (and not allergy pills) and there is more in his hand, waiting to be ingested. You give him a talking to, saying words like,

NO! Yucky! Spit it out.

You pry the rest of the cat food from his hand (how he got a hold of it is still unbeknownst to you) and put it in the cat bowl (which is high and out of reach). While you are doing this, the child managed to take his diaper off, a new thing he now does simply because he can. As you are bending down to pick him and the diaper off the floor, he starts to pee.

You gasp and turn around, again for a split second, to grab some paper towels. You turn around to see the child splashing, slipping and sliding in the urine, all while completely butt naked.

Fact: A baby can slide on his rear end when the floor is greased with his urine.

At this point, you start to laugh and you notice a beautiful thing: the garage door is opening. Hubs is home.

You tell yourself he can take care of the naked, pee soaked baby. While waiting the couple of seconds for hubs to get in the house, butt naked baby runs to his activity table and instead of doing the activities, he climbs on top of it and proceeds to stand up, butt naked.

This is what your husband sees upon arriving home:

• you holding paper towels, laughing hysterically,
• a urine soaked, butt naked baby standing on an activity table, smiling brilliantly,
• pee streaked across the kitchen floor,
• a dirty diaper on the counter next to dinner prep
• and a sandwich burning on the stove.

Motherhood has taught me that three minutes is a LONG time.