and oh, mercy me; god bless catastrophe

The past few days have been rough at best. Ethan and I have been stuck in the house the past few days and we're both going pretty stir-crazy. He and I like to be on the go, like to explore the world outside. Being cooped up in a house for days on end is the bane of both of our existences and it's been funny how much of myself and my own personality I can see in his during these days. It's interesting to watch him get frustrated, to bring me my car keys, to point at the door, to stare out the window and whine, whine, whine. His fever has been gone since Saturday and so I was looking forward to today as the start of a new week, one kicked off with our Stroller Strides class first thing in the morning to start it off right. Strangely, at 9:00 (the time Stroller Strides begins), Ethan was still sleeping.

This is suspicious for a few reasons, mostly because Ethan never in his life has slept past 7:30. It's just not his personality to waste the day away with something silly like sleep and so he's always up, waiting for his pancake and banana, first thing in the morning. Still, my husband theorized that he was just sleeping soundly because it was dark and rainy out. I got myself dressed, sat down in front of Boy Meets World and went to retrieve the video monitor from the kitchen table. That's when I peeked over at the video monitor and that's when I saw this wonderful sight.

I suppose sometime in the middle of the night, he'd ditched his jammies and his diaper. I thought it was the most hilarious thing I'd ever seen -- though I was a little scared as to what could be waiting for me inside that room. (As I should have been!) A few moments later he woke up and I entered the room to find the biggest mess in the world. No, really. I'm sure it was. I can't imagine a bigger mess, no matter how deeply I search my imagination. I'll spare you the details but let's just say that nothing was spared -- not the walls, the crib, the floor, my child's nostrils, fingernails or the space behind his knees. As I gave Ethan his third bath in the first 25 minutes he was awake, I could tell that a mess like this took all night to perfect. I'm still fairly confident he pulled an all-nighter working out all the intricacies of his, uh, painting.

I spent Ethan's entire four hour nap (this boy was up all night, I just know it!) trying to sanitize our house, scrubbing the bathtub, rinsing sheets and pillowcases and his favorite lovey-doll (who I don't have high hopes for, as far as survival rates go).

Motherhood. So glamorous.