A Little Perspective

What’s harder?
Giving two over-tired boys who’ve eaten too much a bath?
Or feeding over a hundred people at once?

I realize there are a few variables. When feeding over a hundred there’s a large staff, maybe 1 volunteer to every 20 guests. When giving two boys a bath and getting ready for bed, there are only two. But that’s two boys to two parents. Easy peasy right?

I left the festival last night after helping with dinner to run to my parent’s and help Ryan get the boys to bed. Getting the boys to bed seemed simple to me as I was driving out, thinking about how I’d give Ryan a hand for a little while and head back to Sonshine to help clean up since this was the last day. But life is full of little surprises…

Speaking of surprises, that reminds me of the stupid dog and her lovely incident. While we were working on washing the two over-tired and cranky boys, she was outside, romping in the yard with this big ball she plays with. She pushed the ball through a pile of her own poop and then continued playing with it. Which left poop all over her chest and legs. Nice.

Meanwhile, back inside, Ryan took a crying Asher out of the tub and put a diaper on him. Telepathically inspired by Tia, he immediately pooped. So Ryan was working on changing him and trying to figure out how to clean off the dog. I was searching around for something, who knows what, stuck my head back in to check on Miles (yes, I left him for a moment in the tub, only a moment!) So I said, “how ya doin‘?” To which he responded, “good mommy, I’m just playin‘.” But his face told another story. I thought I should probably investigate further but was distracted by thoughts of a poop-covered stupid dog. I touched base with Ryan, who had found what he needed to give the dog an outdoor bath, checked on Asher to be sure he wasn’t breaking anything or eating dog food or something, and ran back to the bathroom, hearing Miles say, “Mommy, get me out of here!”

“Mommy, get me out of here, there’s POOP in here!” He said this as if he had no idea where the poop had come from. So I removed him from the poop tainted tub and proceeded to try to find a way to scoop the floaters out without touching them. Fun game. All I came up with were plastic store bags. I will not go into detail from this point on. It’s gross. Let’s leave it at that. All I will say is that no matter how you get the poop out of the tub, there is water involved and it’s drippy and tricky to get outside to the garbage can without dripping….

The story continues. Asher did poop again. Right away. Then he screamed and screamed when it was time to put him to bed due to being fried. Miles was a hyper, unstoppable, over-tired force as well.

I sheepishly said goodbye to Ryan, not wanting to leave him to go it alone, and headed back to the festival. Earlier the clean-up task had seemed quite daunting. Thinking of all the stuff to pick up, all the things to scrub, all the garbage to deal with… But after the bath-time scene, all of that simply sounded like a break. I think I was the most cheerful cleaner-upper ever to hit Sonshine. Sometimes all you need is a little dose of perspective. No poop??? Count me in!!!