A moment

Come if you will into a five minute moment in my life.

First let me mention two things to help to the drama of this rather long moment in my life properly represent itself.

Scrubs, firstly, is injured. You won't believe what he did. It's actually kind of funny in a warped and twisted way.

While playing Frisbee two days ago he turned to run to get the Frisbee and did not know that JB's car was parked in the driveway.

He SMASHED into it. Very hard. A totally blind smasharoo.

For the last two days he has been lying in corners and in our room. If he gets up, he cries. John thinks he has a deep shoulder or neck bruise.

In addition, I am watching our neighbors' dog, Brick. He's a sweet golden who is very easy to have around. He'll be here until tomorrow afternoon.

So, now, you have a good image. Two boys. Two dogs. But that's only the beginning.

Let's up it to three boys. Why not.

At about the same time, the dogs and the boys see "Doia" and "Keenan" coming to the door. Keenan is going to stay with us for a bit while Joia tends to Moriah at the doctor.

Pandemonium ensues at the arrival of two of Isaac's favorite people.

Brick erupts into crazy spurts of excitement. He begins running back and forth from window to door. Scrubs knows to get into his "spot" so he does. But then he sees Brick and he goes crazy and has to be reminded all over again. "Scrubs, spot. Brick, stay. Scrubs, come."

It's very difficult to tell one dog to "stay" and the other to "come" at the same time. I'm saying come but the other is staying. And then vice versa. How do people have two dogs?

(I know many of you are wondering how I even have one.)

To help tend to the cacophony of craziness, I put Scrubs into the kitchen. I try to put Brick in a back bedroom. But when I say "come" he goes the other way and plops down in a pile next to the couch. He cracks me up. Whenever he senses I want him to go somewhere, he seems to find a "plop spot" to drop into. I tried to bring him to his food dish this morning and he went and "plopped" on Scrubs' couch instead. Once he chooses a "plot spot", I can't do anything about it. He's just a lump of dog, and I'm just one girl with a bum foot.

Try moving an 80 pound dog that doesn't want to move. Not good odds in your favor. Try it with a bum foot, and it is next to impossible.

Anyways, Keenan sees train set in the living room and goes crazy with excitement. He plops down himself in the middle of it to play while Joia and I say our temporary good byes. As the door shuts, Keenan asks me where a certain train is. I have no idea what he is talking about. I am still trying to learn the names of all the trains and tractors and bikes and whatnot that now occupy ever spare iota of our home.

I promise to help him look in a few minutes for the train of unknown origin.

At this time Isaac decides to run back and forth down the hallway in spurts of nervousness. He has been doing this when he gets overly excited lately. He's a bit shy, so running is his way of saying he's happy you have come without actually having to say it.

Elijah brings me a book. He's stinky. Very, very stinky.

So while Isaac is running down the hallway and Keenan is playing trains and the dogs are in their "plop spot" and kitchen quarters respectively, I bring Elijah to the nursery to change his diaper.

The door is locked.

Did I forget to mention that Elijah has learned how to lock and then shut doors? He's never done it to me but he did it to Jessie once while she was here and John once while he had the boys.

No time to find a thingy-ma-bob that I can unlock the door with. So I bring him to my bedroom to change his diaper. I have not made the bed for the day (sorry Joy) but I do have my handy-dandy little basket which includes diapers and wipes and a changing pad. I keep this in my bedroom for moments when the nursery is occupied or, well, locked.

I push the three loads of laundry I have waiting to be folded to the side of my bed and lay the changing pad down. It's a smaller pad so it doesn't allow for complete body protection. But at least his rear end is protected.

Right?

Yeah. Right.

There is stuff in this diaper of colors and images I have never really seen or even pictured before, and I start my defensive posture to get this diaper clean. Since Elijah likes to, well, grab himself down there, I try to block his arms while holding up his legs and spreading his legs and retrieving wipes all at the same time.

It's a move I have semi-perfected in the 25 months that I have been changing diapers on a nearly hourly basis.

But Elijah is having none of it. In the midst of this procedure he reaches down and grabs himself, coating his hand in the aforementioned concoction. When I try to stop him, he throws his legs down in a mad burst of energy and slams both his feet right smack into the diaper that I have taken off.

Feet now have aforementioned yuckiness on it. And, with one more determined "plop" so does my bed sheet.

At this point, the diaper prepares to launch itself over the side of the bed. In a fit of panic for the carpets that they will most likely replace after we move out anyway, I grab for it and stick three of my fingernails right smack inside the diaper.

Disgusting!

I yell, before I can think about it, "Dang it!" nearly as loud as I can.

I turn to see Keenan and Isaac standing in the doorway. Why aren't they playing with the trains or running down the hallway or something?

Isaac repeats "Dang it!" while Keenan giggles. (Sorry Joia. Really I am.)

"No," I say. "Dang it is a bad word. Don't say it."

Isaac smiles. "Dang it, dang it, dang it, dang it, dang it," he says.

I'd move forward to punish him, but I'm not really sure he deserves it since he is mimicking me. In addition, I now have poop on my hand. Elijah has it on his hand and on both his feet and now it is on the fitted sheet too.

A lot of it.

I tell Keenan and Isaac, as politely as I can muster, to go play with their trains.

They in turn, led by Isaac mind you, begin to run up and down the hallway screaming at the top of their lungs.

"No screaming!" I scream.

"No screaming!" Isaac screams back.

I block out the noise and go to work cleaning up the incredible mess that just a few seconds of my life has unleashed. Somehow I manage it. I set Elijah down on the floor next to my bed in just his new diaper, and he takes off to find the big boys.

Once the sanitizer and soap has successfully washed my hands, I bring some to Elijah. I then return to my room.

All that laundry on the bed is now a problem. I need to take off the fitted sheet but how do you do that with laundry occupying every free inch of bed?

Well, you do it. It can be done. You can take off one corner of the fitted sheet and then roll the laundry into that section and then remove another corner and roll the laundry into that section. Then you can take those sheets and your son's clothes and put them right into the washing machine, thankful that you had moved clothes to the dryer earlier that morning to save yourself a complicated step when poop is on the agenda.

I then go and find a thingy-ma-bob that I can unlock the door with. (And yes, post-finding it, I am now keeping it above the door frame so that this doesn't happen again.)

At this moment, believe it or not, the madness has died down. Elijah is in new clothes in his bed taking a nap. Keenan and Isaac are playing peacefully with the trains as if it is Christmas morning. Brick is sleeping in the kitchen, a new "plop" spot all to himself. Scrubs has occupied a rug in the living room.

I, am going to go have a beer I think.

Just kidding.

Maybe.