Comedy in the Midst of Chaos

Top Ten Chaotic Happenings in our lives lately:

10) YS keeps getting into my deodorant and rubbing it all over his face and clothes. Why?

9) Spilled milk. No, I'm not crying.

Updated: We did have spilled milk, but I truly forgot a more pressing chaos - YS keeps locking various doors around the house and then pulling that door shut, so we can't get in without tools.

8) Harley keeps peeing on the floor when he is excited to see someone. URGH.

7) Harley will not stop humping all the boys in the family. He never jumps on me or attempts this.

6) YS will not stop taking dry food from the dog's food bowl and dropping handfuls into the dog's water bowl. Have still not discovered a discipline which will counteract this behavior.

5) Youngest two boys continually bait the dog to bite. MS can't seem to just pet the dog, but must put his hand in the dog's mouth every few seconds or try to take the rawhide chew out of the dog's mouth. YS thinks the dog is a horse and wants to ride him.

4) ES seems to think it is his job to intervene when the little boys are baiting the dog, but this just makes things worse.

3) Can't get family photo taken because the boys have scratches from the dog on their faces.

2) Boys break floor lamp in basement while playing with Harley. Glass flies everywhere. Must carefully extract 1 dog and 2 boys without injury, then leave them alone, unsupervised, while I clean up the mess.

1) We now have 10 squeaking mice babies. Hubby suspects the mommy mouse is already pregnant again. (Stay tuned for photos.)

Thankfully, we've had some laughs, too.

On one particularly awful day, my husband and I sat the three boys down on the couch, across from us, to discuss some of these behavior issues. I was quite upset. As I started off, talking to ES, I attempted to curb his parental stance. I said, emphatically, "Listen, I AM THE MOM." At this point, YS looked up at ES next to him and said, "Yeah, and he is the dad!" (pointing to my husband). Took the angry wind right out of my sails, I'll tell you.

Another day, we were sitting in the living room. ES held up MS's transformer toy. He looked at MS and asked, "Is it a man or a truck?"

MS replied, "A man."

ES quickly shifted things to turn it into a truck and said, "Nope. Is it a man or a truck?"

MS replied, "A truck."

ES quickly shifted things again and said, "Nope. You got it wrong."

You could see MS's wheels turning. He walked over to the toy basket, picked up Spiderman and turned to ES. Then he displayed a coy smile and said, "Is it a man or a spider?"

We all cracked up at ES gave the final answer: BOTH.