My, That's A Lovely Scent You Are Wearing!

I am always a tad jealous of the way other people's babies smell.  Babies can smell like any number of things, but unless they have just spit up or filled their diaper, they usually have a pleasant smell about them.

My baby does not smell so pleasant most of the time.  He was obsessed with my garbage cans, so I finally broke down and put locks on that kitchen cupboard.  In rebellion against such an offensive act as denying him his love of garbage, he has retaliated by waging war on my recycle bins!  I did not lock these because they are taller, making it more difficult to get into them, plus the items in them are less dirty and smelly.  Well, he has found a way to get both dirty and smelly in only a few minute window before I can discover him.  

Today, I found him with an empty (or almost empty) beer can in one hand and an empty can of smoked oysters in the other, waving them around with a look of pure glee on his face.  There were drips of beer not only flying around the kitchen, but all over his hair, skin, and clothes as well.  The smoky smell of the smoked oyster package only added to his... interesting scent.  

Let me tell you, those two smells are not just something eradicated with a simple wipe down.  I wonder what people think when they get near my youngest child; something along the lines of "Phew!  What are they feeding this kid?!"

Not the Usual Suspect

When I threw something away in the kitchen garbage yesterday, I noticed a pair of Matt's shoes in there.  Hmm... This one has "Mitchell" written all over it.  For a while, he went through a phase where he threw all sorts of valuables away, but that was some time ago now, and lately I haven't noticed anything either missing or in the garbage that shouldn't be.

But now, suddenly, there are shoes in the garbage.  No one was around at the time to question, so I made a mental note to talk to Matt and Mitchell about it later.

Of course, I totally forgot about the shoes in the garbage until later that night when I went to throw something away in my bathroom garbage, only to find yet another pair of Matt's shoes in this garbage can as well!  What in the world is going on here?!

This time, I immediately found Matt and asked him if he was missing any shoes.  When he answered "no," I broke the news to him: "Are you aware that someone is throwing away your shoes all over the house?  Naturally, I suspect Mitchell"  At this point, he burst out laughing at my suspicious behavior and admitted that he had thrown them away himself.  His laughter was so genuine and infectious that I got caught up in the moment, laughing aloud with him at the silliness of it all and at my instinct to blame my mischievous middle child, that I forgot to ask why he was systematically filling up my garbage cans with enormous shoes!  

Dumpster Diving

I come by dumpster diving honestly: my grandpa did it, my dad did it (I specifically remember him finding a sandwich in the garbage at the lake one time and, after not being able to convince anyone else to eat it, ate it himself!  To his credit though, that is the only instance of dumpster diving I remember him doing, albeit pretty gross.)

I have taken dumpster diving to a whole new level though.  Not only did I find quite the treasure, but I made my oldest son do it for me!  After all, the "treasure" was for him and his suboordinate (Mitchell) so why not make him do the actual gathering of the item?

Let me back up a bit to give a little perspective on why a mother would possibly make her 5-year-old son get somthing out of the garbage.  One of our neighboring houses is being demolished.  It is being completely leveled to the ground, and it is an awesome thing to watch, even for me!  In order to get the best seats to watch this fantastic show, we parked our butts down in the ally, not 10 feet away from the tractor performing the amazing feat of knocking down walls and tearing down chimneys and causing total and utter destruction.  It was awesome.  Try to ignore the fact that we were actually sitting on the ground in a dirty ally, leaning our backs against someone else's garage door, hoping it didn't open on us and send us falling backwards into someone's garage.  It is at these times, when we are having so much fun doing something or watching something we don't normally get to do or see, that I wonder if providing a new and exciting experience for my boys is worth the fact that it is filthy and we are actually sitting on the ground getting covered by the dust of a newly demolished building.  Obviously, I chose fun over cleanliness this time.

So there we were, sitting on the ground, watching one man working a tractor, one man spraying the mess with a fire hose, and one man just sitting on the fence watching ("supervising" I presume.  Wish I had his job), when something caught my eye on top of the garbage bins next to us.  Now this was actually on top of the garbage bins, not actually in the bins, so it's OK, right?  It looked to me like a child's workbench, taken apart and placed on top of the bins.  The bins were squished in between the work site and the next building, so I couldn't actually reach the workbench to check it out, so I lifted Ben up and onto the bins, and he crawled across them to give me a report on what he found there.  His glowing report was that it was, indeed, a fully intact and clean workbench that had been taken apart a bit in order to fit in the small space, but otherwise in great shape!  He dragged it back to me, and we quickly carried it a block back to our house (quickly in case someone somehow knew that I had just taken a toy out of the garbage and scolded/criticized me for my disgusting act.) 

       We cleaned the thing up, brought it upstairs, put all our tools in/on it, and it is our new favorite toy!  The funny thing is, we almost bought this very same toy for Mitchell at Christmas last year, but it was more money than we wanted to spend on just one toy, so we passed.  Should I be finding and bringing home someone else's garbage (or, more correctly, encouraging my child to do so?)  My final thought on the matter is that when the "treasure" is good enough, the answer is a big "yes!" 

Does That Look Like A Garbage Can?

I love that my older boys are now old enough to be able to do some things without me, such as eating breakfast and snacks, going to the bathroom, getting dressed, etc.  But the problem with being unsupervised is just that - they are unsupervised!  Things don't always get done quite as efficiently as I might wish.

Today, after snack, I discovered a little pile of strawberry stems and an empty yogurt container in a neat little pile on the floor in the kitchen.  Mitchell clearly cleaned up his place at the table, but, for some reason, thought a pile on the floor would be, what, easier? more convenient? more fun?  Not sure what the little guy was thinking, but later in the day (after yet another snack of strawberries) I walked in on him piling them up one by one under one of the kitchen chairs.  Later tonight as I was sweeping, I found carefully placed garbage in yet another corner of the kitchen!  I have to give him credit for cleaning up the table, but we need to work on actually finding the garbage can...