He's still TWO...

Noah only has a couple more days as a two year old before he turns three; I'm pretty sure he's aware of this too. He's doing EVERYTHING he can to end his "two's" with a big bang and he's been working overtime lately making the last of his "two's" really "terrible" and frustrating for myself and Spencer.

What "no good" has he been up to recently???

Well...
Recognize this???



It's a GALLON sized bottle of dish detergent I prefer to use for washing dishes- please note that it's ultra concentrated and lemon scented.

Last Friday, I'd gone upstairs to put Ian down for a nap- I left Noah in the living room to watch a movie. I was only away for 10 minutes tops, when I heard the water running from a faucet downstairs. I called down to Noah and asked him to turn it off, since he was the one who had turned it on. I knew immediately that he was up to no good when I heard the water running, so I abandoned what ever cleaning chores I was doing upstairs to hurry downstairs and find out what he was up to. On my way down the stairs, I noticed a strong lemony aroma in the air; strange, I didn't have any candles, oils or air fresheners that were lemon scented.

I get down stairs, hurry down the hallway to the living room and find Noah hard at work, with a scrub brush in hand, working soap suds into my leather couch and ottoman!!! Where in the world did he get the suds from- then I look to my left into the kitchen and suddenly realize in utter disbelief, he opened one of my kitchen cupboards I had a safety lock on and was playing with the gallon of Lemon Joy dish soap I use for my dishes!!!! AGHHH!!!! I try to keep my composure, but when I begin to survey the damage, I note that he had poured almost the entire thing of dish soap onto our leather couches and matching ottoman (which were half the price of a new car), he'd dumped it out onto the new carpet, he emptied some into the seat of Cohen's baby swing, it was all over the walls, our bar stools, the tile, and worse yet, our plasma television screen- I almost CHOKED!... Spencer would have DIED since he worked months at pinching his pennies just so he could buy the 50"plasma TV. I'm pretty sure no where in either the manual for the TV or our couches did it say the best way to care for the items was to rub Joy Lemon Dish Soap into them! Typically we purchase warranties on costly items we buy, but I was almost positive that no warranty would be deemed valid if they saw what damage Noah had done!

I asked Noah what he was doing, not really expecting him to answer- it was a rhetorical question- I could SEE what he'd been doing, but he answered me that he'd been "cleaning". Cute- cleaning, but cleaning the wrong things! Why couldn't he have waited to help clean while I was there by him, or better yet, why couldn't he left the cleaning up to me?!??!

I hurried him away so that I could quickly assess the mess. I started with my couches. Thick, concentrated yellow soap was smeared ALL OVER the leather; it even gathered in puddles along the cracks of each seam on the ottoman and the cushions. Eventually, after an hour of wiping away the yellow suds with baby wipes my couches were clean- sparkly in fact, probably thanks to the dish soap.

Next I went to work on the TV. The soap was all over the screen- lucky me though, I managed to get it all off with some other cleaning solution I normally use on the screen. Some of the soap made it's way onto the TV remote and destroyed it- bummer- all though, I'd much rather replace a $20 remote control ANY DAY over a $3,000 TV.

It took me nearly all the rest of the afternoon to find and clean all the random spots on the walls that he'd scrubbed with the soap. I used my steam mop to clean up the soapy mess he left on my tile. I wiped down the bar stools he'd "cleaned for me". I even ran a load of wash with the seat cover from the baby swing he managed to dirty.

Aside from the couches and the television, my biggest challenge cleaning up the mess was cleaning up the suds from the carpet. He'd left puddles of soap suds in multiple spots ALL OVER the brand new carpet- and remember, this soap was concentrated and thick- not an easy chore to clean out of carpet. After probably half an hour or so of scrubbing, I gave up and decided that I was going to buy Bissel's Smart Bot carpet cleaning machine. It's a little pricey, but I justified it's expense by imagining this probably won't be THE ONLY carpet mess I'll ever have to clean- especially since I have three boys. Just then when I gave up, Spencer walked in the door from work- how is it my husband has impeccable timing and always shows up just AFTER I've cleaned up a HUGE mess???

I rushed off to Walmart to buy the Smart Bot, hurried home and let the machine work it's magic on my soapy carpet. It really worked it's magic, but heads up for anyone thinking of using it maybe on soapy stains like the ones on my carpet- my Smart Bot over flooded 6 or 7 times with BUBBLES! They were seeping out of the machine from every side and angle!

2 1/2 hours after the initial discovery, Noah's mess (or cleaning job, as he would prefer to call it) was eliminated. Unfortunately those 2 1/2 hours I used to clean the mess could have been spent in many better ways like napping or unpacking more boxes.

He's a HOOT that Noah of mine. He definitely frustrates me on occasions, and sometimes I'm sure he gets a kick out of trying my patience- "it's just a stage"- or so everyone says... let's all hope so. He was born on International Talk Like A Pirate Day, maybe that explains his behavior, and he is OBSESSED with pirates- his pirate admiration may even be ingrained in him. He "plunders" and he "pillages", he's even "a fright"- you should see him when he tries to sword fight you with a butter knife, a tree branch or worse yet, Cohen's baby bottle! He's certainly a "rascal", but just as his favorite song "Yo Ho (A Pirates Life For Me)" suggests, despite all his shenanigans, he knows he's "loved by 'his' mommy and dad". (It doesn't mean though that we love his "terrible two's"- we're excited for when he decides to bid "Adieu" to those!)

P.S. is it ironic that a friend of mine, has a little boy who is a year younger than Noah who also decided to do just the same thing with Palm Olive dish soap all over her new carpets just a day or two ago??? I think messes like these are hard evidence that suggest that boys, even grown men (let's say husbands) should really just "leave the cleaning to the women"( quote from Cinderella).

Oh, another note- sorry there's no pictures- I didn't think to take a picture of the mess until AFTER the mess had been cleaned up.

BTW just last night Ian was drinking some blue gatoraide- moments later while he was climbing the stairs, he spit some of it up onto the carpet!!! I guess I have no luck with carpets now that I have so many boys- but honestly, what a relief it was having the Smart Bot carpet cleaner handy to eliminate the mess for me!