"Not Me!" Monday

Wishing you had an outlet that would help make your crazy life seem a tad bit normal? Wondering if anyone else's kids enjoy shouting farm animal noises at complete strangers in the grocery store? Looking for a place to vent your frustration at your toddler's infatuation with flushing various household items down the toilet? Look no further. "Not Me!" Monday was written just for you! (Well, and for me, because really, I just need to get this stuff out!)

Enjoy this week's post, and feel free to leave a comment and chime in with some of the things you didn't do this week!

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This week began with a glorious burst of color! Of course, the gorgeous masterpiece to which I am referring was contained on a single, large sheet of construction paper. It wasn't, mind you, all over, say, the living room floor. And certainly, my darling boys (the geniuses behind this work of art) hadn't chosen as their primary artistic instrument several brightly colored crayons, which they had (brilliantly and methodically) shaved into teensy-tiny pieces with their (long, unkempt) fingernails and mashed into the (beige) carpet, leaving a sizeable (4x4, at least) area of (significantly different) colored shading in the (very noticeable) middle of the room. Nope, not my kids.

My almost two-year-old added a whole new dimension to his "Superman" persona this week. Remember this post? Well, in our house, Superman doesn't limit himself to leaping off tall couches in a single bound. Apparently, he also runs naked through the upstairs, hiding behind curtains, and when his unsuspecting parents walk by looking for him, he flings the curtains open with gusto...and begins urinating on the carpet in front of him.

Wouldn't it be ridiculous if someone else's kid actually did that? Thank goodness mine didn't.

Of course, it definitely wasn't yours truly who neglected to hold onto that same small, slippery toddler sufficiently when he asked to use the toilet in the middle of bath time. This certainly did not result in his falling bottom-first into the toilet.

Later this week, my Mom flew in from Texas to help out as we await the birth of Baby #3 (who now has a name! See this post!) The day after she arrived, we went over to my in-laws' to visit over supper. Despite feeling tired and overwhelmed with the end of this pregnancy, I maintain an attitude of helpfulness and hospitality at all times. So if you heard about the mom who (very inconsiderately) plopped right down into a recliner after dinner and proceeded to sleep away the next hour while her in-laws and mother (the guest) cleaned up and looked after the children, don't worry, it wasn't me.

And finally this week, I am happy to report that we had an absolutely incident-free outing to the grocery store last night. Yep. It wasn't my kids who behaved like full-blown hooligans, running like mad all over the store, despite my best efforts to keep them corralled. You know the kids you saw pull a large bag of grapes off of the produce aisle stand and run over said bag several times with the nifty grocery-cart-with-kiddie-race-car-attached, squishing the grapes? Yeah, the kids who then sat down in the middle of this mess and began eating the squished grapes directly off of the floor, all in the amount of time it took their mother to walk fifteen steps over to the organic spring mix and choose a box? Nope, not mine.

Similarly, it was not my oldest son who walked along behind the cart as I chose vegetables for a salad, discreetly licking his hand from top to bottom and then smearing its wet contents all over each vegetable in front of him. My kids know better, and if they had even considered doing something like this, I surely would have noticed and caught them before they actually touched the vegetables, much less 15-20 in a row. (Believe me, having seen this, I now have an even more compelling reason than pesticide residue to really scrub those veggies for my salad!) Some people's kids are just out-of-control and gross. Geez.

Not wanting my kids to get any crazy, hair-brained ideas about behaving anything like those other kids, I somehow determined it would be best to carry my second son in one arm while I pushed the absurdly full grocery cart with the other hand, and I chased after my oldest son with my go-go-gadget-arm. You know, a la Inspector Gadget??(Hmmm....wouldn't it be nice to have one of those? A little weird, maybe...)

Anyway, my kids love to be hauled around the grocery store, particularly when they'd rather be running around putting wholesome and nutritious foods like Twinkies and Cocoa Puffs into the cart by the armful. So that mom you saw struggling to maneuver through the dairy aisle, barely hanging on to her squirming, 32lb. toddler (who was nearly upside down) on one hip and trying desperately to maintain the least shred of modesty as her maternity pants slid off the other hip...

You got it...it wasn't me.

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I'd love to hear about all of the things you didn't do this week! Scroll down and click on the comment link to leave a note. "Not Me!" Monday is an incredibly fun, blogging carnival started by MckMama on her blog, my charming kids. Basically, it's where we all can be brutally honest about the ridiculous things that will inevitably happen in everyday life.