Trying To Go With The Flow...

"Irelynn...get your pants on!"

"I am!" She is zoning out while Mickey Mouse starts singing the "Hot Dog" song.

I am frantically running around, putting together the diaper bag, looking for Connor's missing shoe, and trying to locate the directions to the apple orchard. It was Irelynn's field trip day at her preschool. I run back to the bathroom, thinking I'd better go one last time. Great...a kid forgot to flush. I flushed the toilet...and instantly regretted it.

The brown water began to rise. I quickly grabbed the plunger and desperately tried to unclog the toilet...with no luck. The water continued to rise, spilling over the top.

"OH MY GOD! STOP!!!"

I glance around at our bathroom floor, littered with tub toys, clothes, and a pair of Irelynn's shoes. I picked up a shoe and set it on the side of the bathtub while continuing to plunge.

"NO NO NO NO!!!!" The water is still spilling out, now covering the floor and making it's way to the hallway.

The three younger ones, trapped in the living room by a baby gate, are getting concerned. Owen starts shaking the bars, calling "mamamamama...."

Connor starts crying.

Irelynn tries her best to keep me calm.

"It's okay, Mommy! Mommy...everything is okay...Mommy, listen to me...it is ALRIGHT!"

I grab the phone and frantically call my husband, who is riding in the back of a jeep across the state for a project he has to do for work.

"THE TOILET IS OVERFLOWING!!!! I CAN'T MAKE IT STOP!!! I don't know what to doooooo....."

He calmly tells me to turn the water off at the pipe. Oh. Duh.

"Mommy....everything is okay!"

I turn the water off, and grab the carpet cleaner and begin sucking up poop water from the floor. My mom arrives. It's time to go.

Luckily, the apple orchard trip was fun...and incident-free. But then I had to come home.

As the older children arrived home from school, I informed them that the one bathroom was out of commission. It starts off okay. Jaylond, the thoughtful child that he is, took an excruciatingly long time announcing that he was going to be occupying the bathroom for awhile, so if anyone else had to go, now was the time. He asked every member of the family, multiple times, if they had to go. Finally, slightly irritated, I snapped.

"JUST GO!" I took a deep breath. "Sorry...but I think you're fine to use the bathroom...just go ahead."

I kid you not....thirty seconds later, the older girl is tattling on him. She decided she did, in fact, have to go...and he was "not hurrying up." I remind her that he offered plenty of chances before he got in for her to go. This apparently did not matter. She set up camp outside the bathroom and began a verbal assault until the boy had no choice but to surrender.

She apparently needed to do the same thing, because she spent a good 20-minutes occupying the bathroom. When she finished...right on cue...the toddler informs me that she, too, has to go.

((sigh))

I lead her to the working toilet...only to find out that it is no longer working. It, too, was now clogged.

"WHAT HAS THIS FAMILY BEEN EATING??!!"

"Mommy...I have to go poop."

Okay. Deep breath. I have the older girl retrieve the toddler potty from the other bathroom, and set it in the hall, so I can work on unclogging this toilet.

"But Mommy...I can't use this potty. It isn't clean."

"Irelynn...just use it right now. I can't do anything about it at the moment."

She finally condescends to using the dirty potty. I hear the babies start to cry in the living room. Owen is yelling for me, Connor is whining. Jaylond disappeared downstairs, and the older girl is whining about the fact that our house currently smells like a sewer.

"Mommy! Come wipe me!"

Bruce finally arrived home...looking a little scared.

"Are you okay?"

"It's been a pretty shitty day."

I love my husband. Truly. How many men would come home to that, go unclog multiple toilets, and scrub down a bathroom with bleach, and then have a beer with his exhausted wife?

Needless to say, our family then had a meeting regarding toilet paper usage and proper flushing technique.