Mommy's Li'l Meltdown

My baby boy turned four on Friday. And I had an amazing birthday post planned. I really did. It was sweet and meaningful with just the right amount of silly. (It was even going to be written on Li'l Dude's birthday, instead of the Tuesday after.) I totally had it half composed in my head, all ready to be whipped together during naptime. (I love you, naptime.)

Then, I had a complete and utter mommy meltdown. It was bad. Like hiccuping, ugly sob hysteria bad.

Before I tell this story, I have something to confess: I'm not the greatest with messes. Growing up, I was a hardcore tomboy with an uber laid-back mom who let me splash in mud and swim in creeks and get covered in pine tree sap every. single. day. And I loved that. I so want to be my mom in that regard, but I'm just not. (I have other serious character flaws, too. I never, ever, ever floss. And I cannot for the life of me remember to bring my reusable grocery bags with me into the store. It's awful, I know. Just call me the environment destroyer.)

I love it when my kids go outside and get dirty. I love it when they let their imaginations run away with them, and they turn the playroom into a castle/fairyland/football stadium. I love watching them roll in the mud stomp around in their rain boots and build block towers and make cookies from scratch. It's the aftermath that makes me twitch.

(On that note, there are some movies I used to enjoy that I cannot handle now that I'm a mom. Home Alone? Seriously, the slime on those basement steps is never coming off. Ever. Beethoven? How can people laugh at the thought of a muddy Saint Bernard romping through a living room? It kinda' makes me nauseous. Then there's that scene in Marly and Me when puppy Marly gets scared of the thunderstorm. And eats the garage. Puke.)

With that being said, I try to stretch myself and give my kids space to get muddy and play in the dishwater and - you should be proud of me for this one - use the Play-doh ice cream maker thing that spits tiny Play-doh "sprinkles" all over the house. Earlier this month, I was at a really awesome retreat for adoptive moms. In one of the sessions, the presenter suggested trying these fun water beads for sensory play. So, in a little attempt at getting outside my box, I ordered some.

Water beads start out as tiny colored balls, about the size of the head of a pin. (If you look really closely - and have x-ray vision - you can read that this little bag contains about 30,000 beads.)

After soaking in water for 6-8 hours, they swell into squishy grape-sized spheres. They're way fun to scoop and pour and smush. (Please ignore my blurry pics. My new budget-friendly smartphone is not quite up-to-par in the camera department.)

I thought the water beads would be just right for a special birthday activity. (One of my other obsessive tendencies is getting way stressed out over special days being really extra special.) So, Thursday night I pulled out the nifty little bag of 30,000 water beads and dumped 5,000 or so into a dish basin full of water. The kids were way excited and kept checking on them to see how quickly they were growing.

Friday morning, the beads were ready. All three kids dug right in. We basically had to drag Li'l Miss away from them to go to school. After a quick trip to the Y, I got the boys all set up to play with the beads. I put three bowls on the floor so there was no chance of spillage and tossed in a few scoops and spoons for extra sensory play fun.

Then I...erm...remember, hindsight is 20/20...I went upstairs to shower.

And my sweet Li'l Man did this.

My lame phone camera cannot even begin to capture the disaster that was my dining room floor. And my living room. And my kitchen. And pretty much everywhere in my downstairs that a small, squishy, grape-sized sphere could roll after being dumped from a tub.

It. Was. Awful. And that spot in the middle where you can actually see a circle of floor? That's where my two little guys were dancing on the water beads. So, although it looks clean, it's actually covered in a thick layer of smashed-water-bead slime.

For about 58 seconds, I really and truly had no idea what to do. Li'l Man piped right up and admitted he had put all the beads in one bowl and poured them out. (I was a teeny bit mad at him at that point.) Well, I thought, natural consequences are always a good thing. He dumped them out; he'll clean them up.

So, I went all in and told Li'l Man this was his clean-up job. He had decided it would be fun to dump 5,000 tiny orbs in the middle of mommy's dining room, he was going to chase down the 4,900 that weren't ground into the floor and put them back in the bowl.

Before I tell you what happened next, I promise I wasn't totally hardcore on this consequence thing. I tried dividing the floor into sections so he could finish one at a time. I tried holding the dust pan so Li'l Man could sweep the beads up. I tried giving my little guy a smaller bowl so he could collect a few beads at a time. 

Nothing worked.

Not only did nothing work, my Li'l Man got an attitude. He was half-heartedly shoving beads in his hand one at a time. After about four beads, he'd go to pick up a fifth one and drop the first four. Then he'd take a little handful or cupful of beads and drop them into the dish basin from about two feet up. Squishy little orbs bounce, dude. Needless to say, there weren't too many water beads actually getting picked up.

This mama who hates messes was trying to supervise a clean-up failure in the middle of a huge disaster for five r-e-a-l-l-y long hours. It was a special day. Oh-so super special.

We finally took a break for school pick-up. Once Li'l Miss got home, she and Li'l Dude jumped in to help with the clean-up efforts. Somehow the mess started to disappear pretty quickly with six little hands grabbing beads.

About 4:00pm, most of the beads that hadn't been smashed into the floor were back in the tub. I was mess. Li'l Man was a mess. I never wanted to see another water bead ever.

Li'l Miss and Li'l Dude still thought the evil little colored orbs were pretty cool. While Li'l Man went to cool off his room and Mommy tried really hard to pretend her feet weren't sticking to bead goo on the floor, they took the big dish tub of beads and set it on a stool to keep playing.

I survived five hours of mess. That's something, right?

But then Li'l Miss knocked the tub off the stool. I'm so not kidding right now. And I lost my mind. (Insert hiccuping, ugly sob hysteria.) Even those of you who aren't ridiculously OCD can't blame me at this point, right?

So, there was no perfectly-worded birthday post. There was just surviving. And trying to calm down enough to breathe while telling Daddy that heneededtocomehomerightthatsecond. 

Thankfully, it's pretty easy to make my Li'l Dude feel special. He got the brownies with blue frosting he'd requested and the card that he wished for and even a wiggle car that was a total surprise.  In the end, I'm pretty sure the birthday boy thought his day was special after all.

Happy (slightly-belated) birthday to my jeep-driving, heart-melting, basket-shooting, dragon-slaying four year old. Words can't say how much I love you, Li'l Dude. (And to prove it, I might even let you play with water beads Play-doh tomorrow.)