Clarke's Chaos: The Incident-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named

I desperately needed to do laundry... at the laundromat... and did I mention I have three small children... and my husband was gone...? Yeah. He was out of town for work... for several more days. Eliana, the master spitter-upper had dirtied every single burp rag (and almost every shirt) I owned... and we had no washing machine... Trying to figure out how to get 3 baskets of laundry and 3 kids (only one of which could be counted on to walk nicely beside me) into the laundromat was proving to be just like a difficult word problem.

Question: You have 3 kids and 3 laundry baskets. How do you get the laundry into the laundromat without leaving any children unattended in said laundromat and without someone calling the police on you for leaving children unattended in the van...

Answer: You call your brother who just got home from his Hawaiian honeymoon and offer to buy him dinner if he will please come over!

Yup. That's what I did. They came over, we loaded up the kids and the laundry and headed to the laundromat. He helped me carry the baskets in and Shevon remained in the car. (No kids alone inside, no kids alone in the car! See how clever I was?!) Then we headed to IHOP for the promised dinner.

Sooo... we order our food and as we are waiting, we hear Eliana giving some tell-tale grunts and grimaces. I I take her to the bathroom and change her diaper... and her clothes. I get back to the table and Chris says Joshua smells poopy now. So I head back to the bathroom, and change his diaper... and clothes. Notice a pattern yet? Just wait, it gets better. We get our food and eat. Chris picks Joshua up as we are getting ready to leave, and when he sets him down he realizes he now has poop all over the front of his shirt. Looking at Joshua, we realize he now has poop all up his back. For real, not making it up. So I head back to the bathroom yet again, trying to hold his shirt in such a way that other customers don't see the poop all over my son as we walk ALL THE WAY ACROSS the restaurant to the bathroom... again. Did I mention I have no more clothes for him, only one diaper left, and NO MORE WIPES?! Yeah, so thankfully the paper towel dispenser was right by the sink and changing table. Got him cleaned up and the diaper on. Shirt and pants are definitely dirty. I put my chin up, trying to look put together, and head out of the bathroom... ALL THE WAY ACROSS the restaurant to the front doors, with my son in nothing but a diaper, socks, and shoes. My brother had managed to somewhat clean up his shirt, but is still freaking out a bit about needing to hurry home and wash it. Not that I blame him for trying to make a quick exit and get away from my children... if I could have I might have considered it too. So we stop and get the laundry and they say a hasty goodbye. I hurry and get Joshua into the tub and start nursing Eliana to sleep for bed. About five minutes later, Brielle yells from the bathroom. I go running and find a bathtub full of... umm... dirty water. So I manage to drain that, refill it, hurry and get Eliana down so I can focus on the boy. I finally got everyone to bed, cleaned the tub again, and then called my husband... he said he wished he was home to help me... I'm not sure I believed him... :P

Anyway, soon after the incident-that-shall-not-be-named, they came back again to say goodbye. It was time for them to take off on their Alaskan adventure. They'd both gotten good jobs up there, in the same town as my parents.