Good Day Gone Bad, Fast

I was a good girl today and continued my quest for a clean house.  I scrubbed, sorted, pushed furniture, hauled to the garbage can, kept the kids clean, warm, fed and delivered to and from school on time.  Whew!  I was feeling like a super hero and proud of it!  Pride.  That was the undoing of my brand new, barely tested, superpowerness.

This is how it went down...


I was in the upstairs guest room (otherwise referred to by Hugo as Grandma Kris's room even though Vovo, Tio Rafael, Sofia, Aunt Millie and Lucas plus many, many of our friends have all slept between those sheets) vacuuming.  I had spent the better part of the day moving the furniture into a more pleasing pattern about the room.  Every piece of furniture that I could have possibly stuffed with stuff, was stuffed.  Under the bed I had a double row of keeper boxes of my yarn stash along with magazine files.  The two cupboards are stuffed with projects, fabric, stationary, books, stuff, stuff, stuff!  Everything needed to be dusted and washed.

So, I was on the far side of the bed vacuuming and humming to myself when my ears picked up on Hugo's voice behind me.  He was supposed to be on baby detail.  I had left him moments ago, with the girls in the nursery making stacks of blocks for them to knock over.  I promised him to give me 5 more minutes to finish vacuuming the floor and then we'd all go downstairs and start dinner.   


Again I heard his little voice rising higher as he tried to get my attention.  "Almost finished!" I half hollered over my shoulder in his direction.  "MOM!  There is paint on the floooooor!!"

That got my attention. 

I turned around to find him in the doorway to the guest room, covered in paint from the waist down.  He also had a sister flanking either side of him, semi covered in paint.  "WHAT  HAPPENED?!?!" was all I could manage.  Hugo's eyes were welling up with tears.  I dropped the vacuum, flew to where he was standing, saw the before mentioned paint on all three kids (were those his new Gap jeans?) saw paint streaks across the good rug, and finally saw the dumped paint can in the nursery, oh, was I ever glad that I hadn't finished the crocheted rug for the nursery!  My mind had me strip a crying Hugo in 2 seconds flat, I jumped over the girls like hopscotch to the door of the bathroom.  Quickly I scrubbed at the jeans, they turned out to be his Levi's, and I scrubbed some more at the boy's new slippers then tossed all three into the bath tub for a good soak.  I hopscotched it back over the two babies and our crying Hugo into the hall so that I could scrub the good rug.  My mind was racing with how could this have happened?  How could he have gotten the lid off?  And why didn't I move the can down to the first floor long ago?  I was stressed out.  I knew I had a very limited time line to clean everything. 


Hugo was still crying, the girls kept trying to crawl through the paint, I was silently cursing myself while scrubbing away and then this little voice popped up in my head saying, "You should really pause you know, and take some pictures 'cause you're gonna think this is pretty funny sometime soon."  I ignored that little voice.  I was mad and planning on staying mad for a very long time.  See, this was not good, every lingering scrap of my superpowerness had surely evaporated.   


Once the rug had been cleaned I moved onto the biggest problem area, the floor of the nursery.  As I surveyed the damage I decided it could have been much, much worse.   The girls were becoming a big problem.  At first they thought it was great that I was on the floor with them and then not so great that I wouldn't let them play.  I begged Hugo to keep the girls in his room.  He was seriously falling apart before my eyes.  He'd carry one girl to his room while the other would crawl with all her might to beat it back to me on the floor.  I could have cried, Hugo was almost crying, and the girls were crying as the paint dried a little bit more upon the floor. 


I had found a fan from a friends wedding that I wasn't sure if I'd toss of keep earlier in the day.  I decided to use it as a scoop for the thick paint to dump it back into the can.  So I scooped and I scooped and scrubbed and scrubbed and then I felt a little pressure on my back and a moment a second little something a little higher up on my back.  It was Sabine and I was pretty sure that my sweater was doomed.  I did my best to block it out and hollered for Hugo to come quick.  He told me he just didn't know how to keep the girls in his room, that they kept getting out.  I suggested he shut the door.

Soon thereafter, the floor was as clean as it was going to be.  We all pulled on our jammies and headed downstairs to dig up something for our now late, late dinner.