About Me

I am the mother to 6 children and former foster mother to 2. I am passionate about whatever it is I am passionate about, until I change my mind. I dream big, plan big, and once in a while I even make it big. We are planning to take our freak show on the road. Join us as we embark on a new adventure!

Friday, October 05, 2007

A TALE OF TOOTHPASTE

Recently the bathroom situation reached far beyond my comfort level. Having to check for disgusting substances every time I needed to use the bathroom became too much so I banned all children from the downstairs bathroom and declared it an adult only zone.

The only problem with this plan is that the upstairs bathroom got REALLY gross really fast. Toothpaste was everywhere, all the time. When I say everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. On the walls, mirror, floor, bathtub...everywhere. Kids would complain to me that they stepped in a pile of it, and they were of course all innocent.

Gary asked my one day to go out and buy lots and lots of toothpaste. He instructed me to buy as much as possible, white toothpaste, blue toothpaste, sparkle-ey toothpaste, multi colored, just as long as it was all different. He is brilliant! We gave each kid their own tube and sharpy-ed their name on it. They were very excited.

Right away, toothpaste everywhere. (Now for a long time I would have bet money that the toothpaste culprit was primarily Anna. I have seen her on more than one occasion apply 2 inches to her brush.) Toothpaste on the toilet, on the toilet paper, on the wall, globs of it on the floor. Gary called Amy to clean it up. "It isn't mine, I didn't, I'm careful!" She proclaimed. "Let's check" he suggested. And before they even had to look, she said, "Oh, I guess that is mine. I'll clean it up." That was several weeks ago and we haven't seen a lick of toothpaste anywhere but in the sink.* Amazing!

And since we are speaking of dental hygiene, (in a round about way!) Matthew had a filling this week. My first child with a cavity. Sigh. He got in the chair and I started to prep him, telling him that the dentist was going to give him some medicine with a big needle and it was going to hurt, but then the medicine would make the pain go away. I asked the dentist if there was anything he wanted to add, and he said, "We'll see." He told Matthew that he was going to tickle his tooth. His "tooth tickler" looked suspiciously like a drill to me. Matthew waved to me and nodded in response to the dentist's questions. A minute or two went by and the dentist asked the hygienist for the filling. "Did you just DRILL out his cavity?" I asked. "Yup, all done!" Holy cow. my baby had a cavity filled with no novocaine. What a trooper!

*I have to wonder what she has been thinking when stuff like this happens. Is she just not that self aware, or is this passive aggressive behavior? When you can call her on something, she will admit it, but until you can prove it she will deny (very convincingly too) until the cows come home. Hmm.

1 comment:

Tudu said...

He is brilliant! I am off to purchase 7 tubes of different color toothpaste, I hope there are that many.