Vance's 4th Birthday Party

It is the week before Vance's 4^th birthday party and my goal is to come home from work and concentrate on cleaning the house.  I find that if I do a little each day, it is a lot less stressful than trying to clean the entire house is one night.  Unfortunately for me, my focus on the cleaning means less focus on Owen.

I spend Thursday night cleaning the basement.  Our basement has turned from Man Cave to Kiddie Playhouse in the four years since Vance has been born.  And, because our kids don't prioritize picking up their toys when they're finished playing with them, it takes an entire night to pick everything up and vacuum.

So, there I am, happily, well maybe not happily, picking up the toys in the basement.  Vance, being the good boy that he is, is helping me pick up the blocks, telling me; "I will get the blocks under the table because you are too big to go under the table."  Thanks, honey, I love you, too.

It is after maybe three minutes that I notice Owen and Elsa are missing.  I hear Elsa upstairs saying something about water.  I just know they are trying to get water out of the fridge like they were doing 20 minutes ago and I am afraid to go upstairs and see the mess.  But, I do anyway because it is better to contain the mess as quickly as possible.

It is at this moment, I should have realized what I was in for.  Just an hour earlier, while cooking dinner, Owen and Elsa broke into my bathroom cabinet (yes, there are child locks on it and no, they do not work on Owen).  Once in my cabinet, they took out my very expensive Chanel face powder.  Powder I only use on special occasions.  Powder they decided could be used not only on themselves, but also on the floor.  I had vacuumed that floor only moments before.  That should have been my sign to give up and go to bed.

So, I walk upstairs, not thinking of the face powder incident, and I see water all over our newish laminate floors.  Only, it is not the minor amount of water that spills out of the fridge when they are trying to fill their water cups on their own.  No, this water looks like a lake.  A massive lake spread out between the kitchen and the dining room.  That is when I notice the empty gallon of distilled water on the floor.  Owen took it upon himself to pull out the distilled water we use for Peter's humidor and pour it into his and Elsa's cups.  Are you kidding me?

I grab Owen and put him in his room right away and tell Elsa to go downstairs.  I go into the hall closet and grab three beach towels to try to mop up the water before it seeps into the laminate and causes it to bubble.  I find that the three towels are not enough so I grab three more.  During this entire process, Owen is in his room yelling to me that he has "stopped whining".  Yes, that is one of the rules of timeout: you cannot leave your room until there is no more whining.

At first, I ignore him because I am busy mopping up the lake in the kitchen.  But, after I am finished, I decide to just ignore him.  If he leaves his room on his own, which he has no issue doing even though his brother and sister would never leave their timeouts without permission, that's fine.  If he stays in his room, well, at least he's semi contained.  Either way, I am going back downstairs and continuing to clean.  I am too tired to deal with how I am feeling about him right now.

He comes downstairs a few minutes later.  I continue to clean even though he is obviously trying to get my attention.  After another few minutes, he starts with "Love You, Momma" in his gravely-too-old-for-a-child voice.  Over and over again until, finally, I can't ignore him anymore.  I hug him and tell him I love him, too.  That's the thing about Owen.  He can do something that makes you want to give him away and within ten minutes, he has you back to loving him more than anything.