I hadn’t originally planned to do a part II for this, but since I wrote the first post, I’ve noticed about five billion things that I should have included.

Then Jill from Scary Mommy continued my train of thought by writing about how gross her kids are. So I decided that I needed a second installment featuring more of those special moments that I’ve shared with my children.

Let’s start with gross. I didn’t mention eating habits in the last post (aside from the booger eating of course), and that is kind of a big one in my house.

I’ve mentioned before that my oldest, four year old Oliver has a lot of sensory issues. For him this translates into extreme messiness. He can’t just eat a quesadilla – he has to peel it apart, extract the cheese and mush it around a bit for good measure. And if he’s had enough to eat, the left over food is perfect to use as a prop in one of his many Thomas the Tank Engine tableaux. Mushed up cheese can be pretty much anything featured in a train crash, from a mountain to a pile of…well, mushy cheese (hey – it could happen).

And he doesn’t even have to try to make a mess. A perfect example is the way he eats peanut butter. Given his druthers, Oliver would just eat it straight out of the jar. But since that’s not happening on my watch (though it often does when I’m looking the other way), it is usually spread on a rice cake.

The very first thing he does is lick as much peanut butter off of the rice cake as possible. And once he makes a thorough job of that (which can take an ungodly amount of time), he’ll finish off the remaining rice cake. Then he’s ready to eat all of the left over dregs on his siblings’ plates (he REALLY likes peanut butter).

And there are always dregs because almost three year old George, who mimics the peanut butter licking portion of Oliver’s procedure will never actually eat the rice cake. For George the rice cake is strictly a vehicle for moving peanut butter into his mouth.

By the end of snack time both Oliver and George are covered in peanut butter from forehead to chin. And Oliver tends to have it all over his stomach and thighs as well since he hasn’t quite caught on to this napkin trend that’s been sweeping the nation.

George’s twin Eleanor isn’t quite as messy of an eater as her brothers are – possibly because she enjoys food so much that she doesn’t like a speck of it to miss her mouth – but she really outshines them on “the back end” so to speak.

I’ve already mentioned Eleanor’s love of potty humor. Oliver and George could care less about the fart noises that send their sister into paroxysms of giggles (they’re probably too busy rubbing peanut butter all over themselves to notice). But that’s okay, because Eleanor is gross enough for all three of them. And the other day she took it to a whole new level.

I was enjoying a peaceful moment at the computer while Oliver played on the floor at my feet and George watched Noggin in the basement. Unfortunately, Eleanor was not on board with the whole quiet play thing. Instead she leaped about asking me questions, singing unintelligible songs and whining about her non-existent boo-boos.

While she looked pretty adorable spinning around in nothing but a diaper (yes – I have almost three year old twins who still aren’t potty trained – what of it?), I hoped that semi-ignoring her and suggesting she go find favorite toys might encourage her to entertain herself for a while.

Finally, in a last desperate attempt to get my attention, she proclaimed that she wanted to be “nudie” like Oliver (my children are naked about 70% of the time they are at home regardless of season, room temperature or the presence of non-family members in the house). And in one sweeping gesture she ripped her diaper off, brandished it over her head and sent about fifty poo balls of varying sizes flying in all different directions.

I think I screamed. I know Oliver laughed. And I believe that Eleanor was just as shocked by the turn of events as the rest of us.

It was at that moment that George came meandering around the corner (also in nothing but a diaper), and ignoring the poo balls that I was now frantically trying to pick up before anyone stepped on one, announced that he wanted some milk.

Since I was too busy crawling around yelling, “DON’T touch anything!” he took matters into his own hands and yanked the half full gallon bottle out by himself, sloshing milk all over the floor.

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

But annoyance set in about an hour later when I could still smell poop. And it took me several more reconnaissance missions to locate the hidden stray next to the refrigerator.

THEN a while later, I realized that in spite of copious amounts of Fabreez sprayed into all corners of the room, it STILL smelled like poop. With “linen and sky” top notes perhaps…but poop nonetheless.

I was able to forget my irritation briefly during another moment of quiet computer time (what a surprise…all my children seemed to have disappeared…) I even forgot about the smell. That is until George wandered upstairs to visit (hey – HE wasn’t the one who flung poop all over the kitchen).

He looked at me and said, “poopie!”

I said, “yes, I know – that was a big mess.”

Then he repeated, “no – poopie!”

I acknowledged that, “yes – it does still smell like poopie.”

Finally he pointed and said, “NO – POOPIE.”

It was then that I looked behind the computer and saw the hidden stink bomb left over from the first explosion. Ah – the one that got away…

I would have closed my eyes and taken a few deep calming breaths, but couldn’t since the room literally smelled like ass.

Luckily, that really was the last of it, and the stink is entirely gone. But it’s just another nudge to my mental cocoon of denial that we really need to start potty training boot camp asap. Which opens the door to a entirely new world of “gross”…