She's the Messy One

My son has caught whatever stomach bug my daughter had this past weekend. The poor guy has been throwing up for two days now and with great frequency. Last night was so bad I couldn't even keep up with the clean up. So, after I finally got him to sleep at 1 am I started trying to get the vomit out of the carpet, couch, off the floor, and began loads of laundry. Needless to say, our house smelled like death and looked even worse this morning as the vomiting continued.

My daughter has dance class every Thursday afternoon and so thankfully my mom came to pick her up today to take her. While she was gone and my son was sleeping I went to town disinfecting the house. I cleaned and vacuumed the carpets, scrubbed the bathrooms, stripped the beds of all sheets, scoured the kitchen, mopped the floors, and washed every ounce of clothing, towels, and bedding used over the past 48 hours. The house was pristine.

When my son woke up we got out some of the toys and played with them. Granted, he wasn't really feeling well so we didn't do much but everything we played with he put away. When my daughter arrived back home a few hours later it took only minutes for the entire downstairs to look like a tornado had blown through. Her shoes came off first and were tossed in the middle of the living room. Her dance bag was flung on the couch, her water bottle on the other couch. Then she started getting out all her little gadgets that she plays with and soon they occupied the end tables, the little cubbies in the entertainment center, and a portion of my dining room table.

That is when it hit me. It was her. All this time my husband and I have had this misconception that our son is the messy one. That the reason I spend every single night picking up is because he is a messy boy. We were wrong. It's our daughter. By the time my husband got home forty-five minutes later you could hardly tell that I had slaved away the better part of my day beautifying the downstairs of our house.