I try to limit the potty training references since I have some readers without kids – and one of the perks to not having children is NOT having to spend your day talking about poop. So I’ll warn you now that it IS going to come up in this one. And it’s not going to be pretty.

On Monday evening, I arrived home alone with the kids. Chris had to drive separately that day, and as usual, he had metro problems delaying him by at least an hour. Now, I am home with alone with the kids quite a bit since Chris has to travel for work. But I’ve been finding it increasingly more complicated since the twins ceased to be blobs (that’s right all you Angelina haters – babies do start out as BLOBS) and have joined their older brother in his daily mission to make me a lunatic.

Actually, it’s been a while since anyone would call George and Eleanor “blobs” – but in the recent past, they were far more sedentary. Approaching their second birthday, they are now a force to be reckoned with, and taking your eyes off of them for more than a minute can result in nothing short of global thermonuclear war. Or at least a toilet paper trail from the bathroom that circles the first floor ten times.

The first half hour was a whirlwind of the usual chaos – a blur of kids playing, crying and climbing on furniture while I tried to make dinner, get the daycare bag emptied and start lunches for the following day. It’s impossible for me to remember the exact sequence of events up until the first minor crisis – but that that pretty much sums it up.

Once everyone was busy eating dinner and watching (surprise, surprise) yet another Wiggles DVD, I ran downstairs to change a load of laundry. Suddenly, I could hear Oliver calling to me, “Mommy! Mommy!” But it didn’t sound like he was upset, so I yelled, “just a minute” a few times until I was done. When I came upstairs, I realized that he was calling me to let me know that he had to go potty. He is really only 75% potty trained and still needs help getting through the process. So all I could do was hustle him into the bathroom as quickly as possible and hope that he could at least “finish” on the potty.

Though I was fairly sure he was done, I settled him on the toilet anyway and then ran to answer the phone. It was Chris. He was calling to let me know that he was still stuck on the metro and would get back to me once he was in his car. At this point, my half naked son walked into the kitchen to announce that he wanted ice cream. I asked if he was finished on the potty and then realized that not only was he finished, but he had the subject matter smeared all over his rear end (must have happened when I was pulling down his pull up). I instructed him to “stay right there” (which he didn’t) while I ran for the wipes. Then the phone started ringing again. I ignored it.

While I was cleaning off my three year old, I heard little voices coming from the bathroom. Great! Now the twins were in there, and most likely throwing things into the toilet. After another directive for Oliver to “stay there” (which he didn’t) I ran to find the twins and was relieved to see that they were only trying to climb onto the sink and not anywhere near the toilet. “Okay – everybody out!”

Once I got Oliver clean and busy with an activity, I saw that it was time for the twins’ bath. They raced up the stairs yelling “water!” and happily scampered into the kids’ bathroom. While simultaneously running the water, getting the twins undressed and blocking them from the tub until they were in fact naked, I saw that I was going to have a big problem on my hands… George must have run into his bedroom at some point, and was now clutching his blankie.

George is obsessed with his blankie, and I spend quite a bit of time tricking him into letting go of it so I can throw it upstairs while he’s distracted. I thought I had accomplished this when we got home, but my efforts were foiled by his wily reconnaissance. Now “Linus” wanted to bring the blankie into the tub with him. He is a toddler, and neither willing nor able to listen to reason. And since his current vocabulary consists of “car, truck, train, bus, more and thank you,” there was no point in trying to engage him in discussion about it. I had to forcibly remove the blanket and put him into the water kicking and screaming.

Eleanor splashed happily while George wailed and tried to climb out. I just washed him off quickly and then set him free to reunite with the blankie. Knowing that he had left the bathroom and could, that very minute be peeing all over the second floor, I rushed through Eleanor’s scrubbing. George and his blankie returned within minutes and I was just in time to stop him from throwing the paperback that he was aiming at the water. This was the final signal for bath time to be over, and against Eleanor’s vehement protestations, I pulled the plug. Within seconds I had two naked toddlers in Oliver’s room (where we have all of the bedtime books). One was crying (Eleanor) and one was trying to sneak out the door (George). I closed the door, placed myself in front of it and started stuffing them into their pajamas.

At this point, Oliver decided to come see what all of the commotion was about and tried to open the door. After a few seconds, I realized that he couldn’t get in, and that’s when it hit me: the door was LOCKED. The previous owners installed the door knob to Oliver’s bedroom so that it locked from the outside. I gratefully took advantage of this when we moved Oliver to his toddler bed, and found it comforting to know that I could lock the door and not worry about him wandering the house while I slept. But it never occurred to me that I could get locked in with him on the OUTSIDE.

Never one to panic, I responded to Oliver’s increasing anxiety with comforting promises that I would “fix it” and a lot of the ever popular, “in just a minute.” All the while, I was running through possible action plans. Climbing out the window was not an option since it would be a three story drop, but I thought a neighbor might be outside. So I opened the window and started calling for help. No dice. Everyone was inside their air conditioned homes.

Meanwhile Eleanor, sensing the terror in Oliver’s cries to get in, started crying even louder – which in return increased Oliver’s anxiety. George was furious that I had closed the window (because, you know – that was so much fun), and started crying as well. Great – now I had thee screaming children.

I considered trying to break the door down, but after one half hearted attempt, accepted the fact that I was not the Incredible Hulk. Then I remembered that there were a few wire hangers in Oliver’s closet. DUH – all I had to do was to use the end of a wire to poke the little hole in the door knob and spring the lock. Chris showed me how to do this in our old apartment when I used to worry about Oliver accidentally locking himself in the bathroom.

Within a minute, I had a red-faced, hysterical Oliver in my lap and equally upset twins climbing all over us. Once I had everyone somewhat calmed down, Oliver started dragging us out of the evil room that had kept us away from him for the TEN MINUTES that this drama probably took to unfold. I knew that only one thing could snap everyone out of their hysteria. So I asked, “hey – who wants ice cream?” And then all was golden.

While the twins should have been settling down to sleep and Oliver should have been preparing for his own bath, we sat around the kids’ table exclaiming over the miracle that is ice cream while traumatic events quickly disappeared from our blessedly fickle short term memories.

Good times.

Originally posted on July 24, 2008. I kind of jumped the gun on this last week with that Short Rant to a Short Man falshback. For some reason I thought it was the last Friday of the month… Ah well – one less post to write this week. Visit Scary Mommy for links to more Flashback Friday Posts!