"What's Grosser than Gross?"

Do you remember playing that game as a child? I'm no longer playing it, I'm living it.

I have children.

And they gross me out. The fact that I love them dearly doesn't change that fact, it just helps me find the humor in the various situations I find myself in. You'd think that once you get past the pooping/barfing stage of babies, things would start to look up. Not so. Here are a few scenarios that I've encountered just in the past week. (And I didn't even have to think very hard.)

• We thought Emily may have broken her leg last weekend. When asked to remove her boot to see if she could move her foot, it took all I had not to pass out from the indescribable odor emitting from her feet. I had to wonder "did something die in her boot?" And then I remembered, nah, they always smell this bad. Poor thing. She seems oblivious to the fact that her feet are such powerful weapons.
• I came upon Lukas and Sam "cleaning" the bathroom counter with their toothbrushes. I thought it was kind of cute, but I had to confiscate their toothbrushes (who knows what else they had cleaned). Little did I know, they also had used Emily's toothbrush and later that night she complained that the toothpaste tasted like soap. I had to laugh--it's payback time for her. About 4 years ago she had used BJ's toothbrush to clean the toilet without telling anyone, and when BJ complained that his toothbrush tasted funny, I told him to stop complaining and still made him use it for 2 days until Emily fessed up.
• BJ has to be bribed to change his underwear. I've done his laundry before without any tighty-whities to be found. Is it really that hard to remember? On top of that, his philosophy of clothes is "If I am wearing it, it is my napkin."
• At the infamous Volleyball banquet, I had to keep Lukas from putting a piece of gum in his mouth that he had scraped off from under our table. I must admit, he comes by that naturally, as I considered ABC gum a delicacy as a child.
• Sam loves his blankie. For some odd reason, he likes to shove it in his mouth and sucks on it. (That alone is pretty disgusting.) Yesterday when I went to get him after he woke up from his nap, I found that he had wet the bed. Through and through. And there he was, sucking on his blankie. I'm hoping that he had a drooling problem and that's why his blanket was so wet, but I have my suspicions.
• And this is what prompted me to write this post, the "proverbial straw"....Before naps, my boys went potty. I went in there to speed things up, just as Lukas was wiping from "#2." Before I knew it, he then wiped his nose with the same tissue. Then he looked at the tissue like it was it was defective or something. Did he forget that quickly where it had just been? I tell ya,

Kids are GROSS!!!