Being a parent is full of yucky things, smelly things from the word GO. Within hours of having that sweet-smelling, squishy, helpless mini-person placed in your arms, they start producing horrible oozes and projectile liquids that are equally distributed from both the north and south tunnels. And it will be a main priority and concern for years and years to come. As the creator of this human, you are now in charge of both tunnels and that which exits those said tunnels is, without a shadow of a doubt, your new duty-pun intended. Fortunately, the newness and grossness of that responsibility wears off quickly and can eventually be earmarked as "something I never thought I'd do". It never truly becomes an enjoyable task, but as a parent we learn quickly that there are many many things that can be classified under "other duties as assigned". That list, quite frankly, can go on and on and on and on. And we do it...because that's what parents do. We deal with the gross, stinky, disgusting things our children either do or create with their bodies. Parenting isn't for the faint of heart and it's far from glamorous.
Once all of your offspring are pooping and wiping on their own- not wiping efficiently or effectively, just merely "wiping"- and 7-8 times out of 10 can hit a bucket with their puke, and if you have boys hopefully hitting the pee-targets on a daily basis the gross things we have to deal with should be coming to an end. Right? Well let me poke a couple holes in that pipe dream onto which you are desperately holding. IT DOESN'T END. Well, not for me anyway. I seem to be the Commander in charge of a stinky, disgusting little army of dudes who are neither aware of their disgustingness nor care how it makes their mama's face contort. I fear I've handled all of their nastiness a little too well, and I've desensitized both myself and the humans of whom I'm in charge. They seem to be accustomed and even comfortable with their own gross tendencies. So much so that I have a real concern about their future ability to reel in a female and convince her to stay. Because boys are gross by nature even without this unique-to-a-Lien grossness my children seem to possess. Maybe it's our DNA....potentially Captain Hubby + Crystal = gross, smelly boys?
Yet...and here is where my concern starts to bubble up...T6 isn't a creation of our cauldron of DNA. We hired out for his production and now just take the credit and blame for all that is and is yet to be for the babe of the family. So that leaves me to believe that the nastiness and grossness must be a product of the nurture principle of child rearing. And that means that I am the common denominator in this Boy-dom that oozes, creates and encourages all things disgusting. Awesome! And as they say, the proof is in the pudding...and in this very specific case, the proof is in the rotten eggs. Save your gags because this is about to get really, really smelly.
Imagine Easter weekend. More specifically, imagine Good Friday. It's finally over 70 degrees here and sunny! It's been quite a long winter here so the sunshine and warmth it produces is quite welcome. Since the kiddos don't go back to school for 4 days, we haven't worried ourselves too much about all that lies within the mysteries of a child's backpack. Hang onto that thought for a minute-put a pretty little pin in it.
Since it's warming outside, at least for this particular 4-5 day period, our garage gets quite warmish. And being a mama who was cursed with the super power of heightened smell, I've become quite aware of a weird, almost rotting smell. Now, I have a really terrifying and long history with mouse invasions and all the horrors you can imagine that accompanies that security breach-even the smells that permeate from dead mouse. I'm now the appointed blood hound of the family as I sniff every single nook, cranny, corner and entry point in our garage. I'm sure I was a sight to behold as I made it my mission to seek, find and destroy the smelly smell that smelled smelly!
This went on for days. Every time I entered my garage I was slapped in the nose with the smell that alerted me that something somewhere needed to be addressed, but I was failing to sniff it out. And every day the smell seemed to become stronger and stronger. Let's fast forward to today-10 days post discovery of "the smell". I casually mention while taking out the garbage that I still smell something gross......and then.....it happened. The innocent confession-actually it was an innocent "thought you should know" tattling of a brother that has left me horrified, disgusted and mortified. The child revealed that our sweet little T6 had Easter eggs that he dyed at school two Thursdays ago in his front pocket of his backpack! By the time a big brother discovered the culprit of the smell while Mom and Dad were away, they were "oozing" all over the backpack. AND they decided not to tell Mom so their beloved little brother didn't get into trouble. Now, I love that they have each others' back, but we will most definitely be having a family meeting later and we are going to discuss smells, rotting eggs, and when to keep and secret and when to rat that brother out! To add insult to injury, the brothers also inform me how badly brother had been smelling on the bus- so much so that people wouldn't sit by him!
I don't know if I should laugh or cry or both. Never in all my parenting years have I thought I would be the owner of the Smelly Kid...but here we are. I'm the owner, creator, encourager. Yep, that's me Mrs. Smelly Kid. I can't imagine all of the poor teachers, aids and bus drivers that for a WEEK AND A HALF have been dealing with rotten oozing egg smell and couldn't locate the accuser!
I probably shouldn't be allowed to have any more kids. I'm obviously neither qualified to handle the children's curve balls nor adequately trained in the art of Smellometry to sufficiently deal with boys and all that comes with that gender. And in case you are wondering...the boy will have a new backpack come Monday morning.
