Another Monday

by Angela Tadlock

"Momma! Momma! Danny is playing in the cat boxes again!"
I threw the covers against the wall as I leapt, in one breathless bound, from my bed to the door. My eyes adjusted to the sun light flooding my living room as my brain attempted to grasp the possibility that I just might be out of bed. I made it to my son's bedroom expecting the worse and discovered that it was much worse. I scanned the horror before me.
Handfuls of cat litter had been thrown everywhere. Cat litter covered his bed, the bookshelf, and his toys. His Geo Trak was buried under a mound of litter and beside the mound sat the three year old culprit complete with shovel in hand next to his dump truck. The sight was enough to snap my pre-coffee brain wide awake. The anger in my chest had swollen into my throat as I took in the vast mess before me. Only a couple words were able to break past the anger in my throat.

"YOU! BAD! BATH! NOW!"
I took hold of the boy and began to pull him out of the litter towards the bathroom. Emily followed behind us gleefully dancing as she began to tell Dan how gross he was. Danny had other things on his mind.
"Mommy, you angwy?"
I didn't bother answering him. While I started to strip him in the bathtub a new shriek cut through the air. My five week old newborn was now awake and was looking for mommy . . . That would be me.
I glare up at the clock as Emily shouted from my bedroom.
"Mommy! Elizabeth is crying!"
"I'm with Danny right now! I'll be there in a second!"
A moment later I heard Emily squeaking out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Elizabeth took that as cue to find another level of pitch so high that the neighbor's dog could hear her.

Boy stripped. Water on. Hands washed. Now on to the infant. While I fed the youngest, Emily walked by with the broom.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to clean up Danny's mess."
"No. Mommy has to do it 'cause it's dirty."
"But, Mom. I will clean it and then it won't be dirty."
She turned back toward the litter room.
"Emily! Out!"
"It's okay, Mom. I'm just going to clean it."
"I don't want to give you a bath too!" I gasp! BATH! I had left the water running. I gently, but swiftly placed Elizabeth on the couch and dashed for the bathroom. My son was now in a sea of water that was running out of the tub and onto the floor. I stepped into the pool and turned the water off. Then I pulled the plug.
"NOOOOOO! I wan' the plug!"
I decided not to reason with the toddler and, instead, I headed off to his bedroom to join Emily in cleaning the cat litter off the walls with my Danny screaming behind me.

An hour later I was able to call his room clean. I locked the cat boxes . . . again . . . and set off to pull Danny out of the empty tub. Emily had plopped herself in front of the TV for the past thirty minutes. I hate the TV on in the morning, but that morning I was willing to let it slide.
I entered the bathroom to find that Danny was no longer in the tub. I froze and the knot that clenched my stomach that morning had returned.

I went into the kitchen where I found the boy standing on a chair, naked and covered head to toe in granulated sugar. I screamed. Beyond anger a took a wrist in each of my hands and carried him back to the tub where I held him down and scrubbed him from toe to head to toe again. I pulled him from the tub and walked him to his room where I selected a pair of sweats, held him down, and stretched them over his head and legs while he screamed and kicked in protest. I walked him to the living room where I sat him before the TV in hopes to now mop up the sugar and the bath water.
Just another Monday and I haven't had my coffee yet.