Chaos and Ruin

It blows my mind how different my two children are. My son
is totally type A. He’s a neat freak. He likes order. And he appreciates a
routine. My daughter, the antithesis of my son, is a two-and-a-half foot
Tasmanian devil. She spins through the house at warp speed leaving chaos and
ruin wherever she goes. Here’s what happened to day at the hands of my little
rogue:

At around 11:00 a.m. I had to pee. Normally this is a
customary, all-too-frequent (ask anyone—I’ve got overactive bladder. I could
take Detrol LA but I’d prefer not to be associated with Betty White at the ripe
old age of 32!) occurrence but today there were extenuating circumstances. I
flushed and watched in horror as the water rose rapidly to the brim of the
toilet. Thankfully, it stopped but I noticed a fairly large clump of white
paper that seemed to be stuck in the toilet causing the clog. I took a closer
look and discovered that my daughter had taken the box of wipes, which I had
refilled this morning, and dumped the entire contents into the
toilet. I slid on my elbow-length, industrial kitchen gloves and pulled the wipes out of
the toilet, rung out the pee-soaked water, and put them in the garbage. It
really brightened up my morning.

At roughly 2:00 my son got out his art box and he and my daughter
started coloring. They were playing peacefully together so I decided to take this
opportunity to clean the bathrooms. It was blissful really, cleaning without
interruption. I got so much done and felt great when I finished mopping the
floor and went into the kitchen to check on my kids. I found my son
coloring contently at the table, very into his current project. My daughter was
also coloring contently. Her medium, though, was not paper. It was my stove.  She had decorated the table, two chairs,
the stove, the floor and various parts of her body with every color in the
rainbow. I gave myself a quick pat on the back for having the forethought to
purchase washable markers and got down to the business of cleaning my newly
decorated kitchen.

All was not in vain as I
have learned a valuable lesson from these incidents: As long as I can hear my daughter, I don’t
have to worry. It’s the rare patches of silence that are cause for concern. If
she’s not talking or singing or screaming or whining, then she is, in all
likelihood, silently destroying something.