We're Not Perfect in Palisade

So I've been dying to blog about this - but have also been a bit hesitate because its so self deprecating, but I guess that this blog has a bit of a vein in that nature so here goes.

On Wednesdays, my friend Heather and I have been taking turns having 'preschool' at each other's houses.  Our group of two families has grown to a group of four families and is still growing.  Three weeks ago, we had our first day of four families convene at my house.  After a bit of pre-school stuff, the kids were playing and having a great time.  At one point, they decided to play lifeguard, which consists of taking off their clothes, putting on swimming suits and putting their kid chairs on the coffee table.  Then they sit in the chairs on top of the coffee table.  That's playing lifeguard.  Hudson put on Francesca's black ballet leotard, backwards.  It was a sweet look, but didn't look too comfortable on the buns.  Reya had on a white sparkly number, handed down from Francesca and Cecilia's cousin Ava.  Francesca had on her tropical swimming suit, backwards, also and Cecilia had on her diaper.  So at some point in the day, some or all of the kids were running about naked, choosing their costume, etc.  It was big fun.

Later that night, the girls were climbing into bed and Andrew said, "What's this wet spot on the rug?"  Everyone including me said, "I dunno."  

"Is it pee?" he asked.

Why would he ask such a ridiculous question?  Is it pee?  Who would pee on the bedroom rug?  I scoffed at him, "NO - it isn't pee?" as I bent down to smell it . . . I discovered that it WAS in fact pee.

"Maybe its cat pee."  he said.

"Nope.  Its people pee." I answered, in disbelief and disgust.

Then the interrogation started, and of course, because we began the questioning with, "Who peed on the floor?  Did one of your friends do it?"  The first answer was from Cecilia who said, "Reya did!"

So, of course, refusing to even consider for one second that it could be one of MY children to pee on the floor, I went with it.  REYA PEED ON MY FLOOR!  That little sh*t!  And my internal dialogue really went overboard at this point, as I'm sure you can imagine and I think I even went so far as to banish her from my house, in my mind.  (I'm sorry Amy.  I suck.  I just totally went overboard in my mind . . . luckily, I didn't ACT on any of these falsely channeled impulses.)  At this point, I had failed to see the humor in the situation and only saw myself, scrubbing pee and washing rugs.  BOTHER!

The next day, I was getting ready to put Cecilia down for a nap, Francesca had just started a book on tape in her room, when I went back into her room to get something, only to find Francesca, naked from the waist down, squatting in her closet, finishing off a nice long pee.  I know what you're thinking, because I thought the same thing . . . man - that kid is f*cked up.  I know you're thinking that because when Sarah Shrader told me about a friend of hers that caught her boys pooping in her closet, my first thought was, "man, those are some f*cked up kids."

In Francesca's defense, she was grinning from ear to ear when I caught her.  Obviously, this was something that she thought was funny, or just didn't think much of at all.  At first I thought that this was a copycat incident and that she was only COPYING whoever peed the original pee, but soon enough I came to my senses and had to come to the harsh realization that it was MY kid that peed on MY floor.  D*mn it!

My mom reminded me that I hawked loogies on the heater next to my bunk bed (for a long time, as I recall) in my early youth.  When I think back to doing it, I seem to recall a sense of giddiness in the pure naughtiness of it . . . until I was caught and had to scrub all those loogies off myself.  All giddiness was lost at that point.  But up until that point, it was pretty fun.  And all in all, I don't think I was a monumentally f*cked up kid . . . just a little ornery sometimes.  Which isn't the end of the world.  

I wasn't going to share this story on my blog, but over the weekend, I told Amy and Patricia the story and I thought Amy was going to pee right there on the floor from laughing so hard, so hopefully some of you are laughing, too.  And for the record, there haven't been any more mystery wet spots . . . and believe me . . . I'm checking.  The lesson I learned is that just when I thought that my child WOULDN'T DARE do something, its almost like ASKING them to do it . . . the moment I judged my dear, dear friend's sweet, adorable child and thought - AWK! What the? - - - the Karma Police came right into Francesca's bedroom closet and presented me with a good healthy dose of reality!  Thanks for that - - - ice cold water in the face is so refreshing (and humbling!)