It is Friday, the 13th. That typically means absolutely nothing to me. Nothing. But, today, somehow it means…another bathroom disaster. These happen very frequently at my house. You see, it’s rather difficult to keep track of what every one of my kids is doing at any one moment, especially the three two-year-olds. And like most children, they are absolutely enthralled with the bathroom. The toilet. The sink. The bathtub. The soap. It’s like an amusement park in there! Here’s what happened at Bathroom Adventure Land today.
While I was feeding the baby this morning, I heard intermittent laughter coming from the kitchen. I knew that couldn’t be good! They were up to something. I put the baby down and ran into the kitchen to find all three girls sitting on top of my kitchen counter with a beautiful floral arrangement dismantled all around them, all over the floor, and on the bar stools they’d used to climb onto the counter. You see, hubby dearest sent me a gorgeous red vase filled with perfect red roses, daisies, and gigantic white lilies earlier this week (completely out of the blue, gasp! He’s so sweet!). My girls, in their love for all things pretty, apparently decided to smell the flowers and then to play sword fight with them! Ugh.
I got them all off the counter, put them in time-out for climbing up there, and proceeded to clean up flower petals. When their time-out was over, I put them in the living room with a pile of toys and got them started playing. I returned to the mess and attempted to think like a florist as I rearranged the flowers they’d nearly destroyed. I hid the half-headed daisy swords as best as I could.
So, how long did that take? A matter of minutes, right? Not that long, right? I glanced in at the baby who was happily playing away in her exersaucer. All good there. Then, I went to check on the triplets. Uh oh. One was missing.
And then I heard it. The sound of water. Lots of water.
I ran down the hallway to the bathroom, opened the door, and there stood Chloe on the step stool, in front of the sink, faucet running, surrounded by water, wearing one of her older sister’s swimsuits. I guess she wanted to go swimming. The floor was covered in at least 2 inches of water. The vanity was flooded as well, and there were waterfalls spilling over the edges, into the crevices of each cabinet door and drawer. Ugh again.
How did she even do that?!
The large rug in front of the bathtub was completely saturated, so I threw it in the tub. Then I methodically began to clean up the flood. We’ve had so many messes in the bathroom that I am an expert at cleaning it top to bottom. (I know what you’re thinking. No, I will not come to your house and clean yours. Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean I like it! 😉 ) I checked on the kids frequently as I cleaned up the water, trying really hard to bite my tongue and not mutter anything I’d regret! Even the floor of the linen closet was flooded. You know, the place where we keep the extra toilet paper? I had to remove every bottle from under the sink to mop up the cabinet. An entire bag of cotton balls that I just bought was saturated. Somehow every bow, hair tie, and headband was sopping wet. I used several giant towels in the process of mopping up all that water. I even ripped the tip of a fingernail off while I was handling one of the heavy soaked towels.
But the worst part: the soap dish was full of water, too. I had several lovely soaps in that dish, including a couple of soap balls from Great Cakes Soapworks and the last bar of a favorite batch that I made. Alas, all was not destroyed. I drained the soap dish and aired out the soaps. They are still usable, albeit smaller and a bit misshapen now. And on the bright side, my bathroom is sparkling clean right at this moment.
And to be very honest, I realize completely that a wet bathroom certainly doesn’t qualify as a disaster! There are many worse things. Like that time they flooded the bathroom when they tried to flush down an entire roll of toilet paper. Haha! I’ll tell you about that one some other time!
Just another day in the house of Five Messy Babies.