Maybe I should try tying our ankles together with strings?

AJ is sick with a headache and fever. Now she's starting to get upper respiratory symptoms as well. At least 3 kids in our church have Fifth Disease, which supposedly starts out looking a lot like a common cold/flu illness with a low fever, so it will be interesting to see what will happen. Since I'm not pregnant, I'm not concerned about it. It's a relatively minor childhood disease as long as pregnancy is not involved.

I've been giving her lots of fluids, making her hot tea, mixing Vitamin C in with her juice, and encouraging her to rest as much as possible.

I feel like I could be fighting coming down with something too. But, of course, that doesn't necessarily mean anything when it's me we're talking about.

E-Bee was extra-tired today, too. That may have contributed to her potty accident in the kitchen. But occasional potty accidents are to be expected when one is two and a half. She went right back to successfully taking herself potty. Then she proceeded to sit on my lap with a bare and very poopy bottom.

"Let me know if you need help wiping your bottom," I'd said, as usual. "Otay, Mommy, but I tan do it myfewf," she'd said, as usual.

She's even decided lately that she's too big to need the on-the-seat potty ring: "I'm a big dwown-up. I don't need dat potty teat on wee towwet. I don't mahnt it! I won't faww in, see? NO! Doh away. I tan do it by myfewf. Don't hewp me. Doh out of hewe now, pease." I stopped hovering after a few days, seeing that she could, in fact, do it by herself and usually asked for help if she needed it.

M&M has developed a habit recently of using huge handfuls of toilet paper. Combined with her long-standing habit of neglecting to flush the toilet (because the noise hurts her ears, she says), this creates a rather worrisome situation.

So when the toilet clogged up and nearly overflowed today, she was suitably impressed with the object lesson. It validated the truth of my warnings in her eyes, I think.

All three kids were quite upset at the sight of the water nearly cresting the brim of the bowl.

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I really didn't think it was necessary to make the lesson more memorable or compelling than that. I was highly relieved that the water had stopped rising just before it reached the rim.

So I told the kids not to touch the toilet and ESPECIALLY not to try to flush it again. "Stay away from the toilet down here," I said, "and if you need to use the potty go upstairs to do it." Then I ran upstairs to look for the plunger.

I got downstairs again just in time to hear E-Bee flush the toilet.

E-Bee was in the middle of the ensuing flood. She was not thrilled with the water gushing over her feet onto the stool and cascading onto the floor, pooling across the room and threatening to overflow the wooden ridge at the bathroom door. As I threw back the lid and ineffectively tried to stop the flow of the water with my hands, she was shrieking, "I don't wike it, Mommy! I'm aww diwty! I'm wet! It dot on me! The watew tame out of the toiwet! It's scawwing me!"

It took me at least an hour to get the toilet unclogged, to get Baby E, the bathroom, and myself thoroughly cleaned up, and to get the armload of toilet-water-soaked towels in the wash.

That was before E-Bee had her potty accident, which was before the poopy bottom incident, which was before she managed to slip away from DH and come upstairs with her bowl of pumpkin pudding to find me at my computer and, of course, spill it just as I turned to greet her. (DH had agreed to give me a bit of a break after dinner, but was doing something to make AJ more comfortable at the moment E absconded with the pudding.)

Thankfully, when we went to my parents' house on Saturday we borrowed some videos for the kids to watch. Because, by afternoon, this was one. tired. mommy.

Oh, and a bonus conversation over dinner:

M&M: Mommy, I accidentally swallowed a bead today.

Me: What? How did you manage to swallow a bead?!?

M&M: Well, you see, it's just that I enjoy putting small things in my mouth.

She said it in such a matter-of-fact way.

I shouldn't have laughed, I know. But by that point in the day I couldn't help it.

It's days like this that I really wish there were three or four of me. Someone told me the other day that the way to deal with sibling spats is to just stay on top of things and always be supervising well so that you are right there to intervene in any little disagreements before they become big arguments.

I was thinking, "Wait a minute; how many kids do you have, anyway? You are aware that I have three young children and a two-story house, right?"

I do occasionally have to go to the bathroom, help a child go to the bathroom, put a load of laundry in the wash, prepare a meal, or answer the telephone.

Obviously I try to keep close tabs on all three of my children at all times. They are never outdoors or using any kind of potentially dangerous equipment (scissors, for example, at least for the little one) without me right there giving them my full attention (or at least pretty close to my full attention). But I do allow them to play upstairs in the playroom or their bedroom if I am downstairs, or to play downstairs in the family room while I am cooking dinner or doing laundry or whatever. I am always within earshot, at least, and I check on them frequently--especially when the noise levels escalate or they get unnaturally quiet.

It would be a little weird if I tried to keep all 3 kids within arm's reach of me every moment of the day. I have, at times (especially if one child is repeatedly being hurtful to the others) made one or more of them stay right with me for a while (they don't like it much). But all day, every day? I don't think so. And it only takes about 2 seconds for a kid to grab a toy from someone else, spill something, or, um, flush the toilet.

In hindsight, it might have been a good idea to take all the kids upstairs with me to get the toilet plunger.

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ETA: E-Bee is finally, I think, starting to nod off now at 12:40 AM. I knew letting E take that late nap probably wasn't a good idea, no matter how much I needed the break. :) Her being up late was a good thing in a way, though, because it meant that I was still awake when the washing machine started leaking.