The Great Peanut Butter Fiasco

I'm not having a good day. Pull up a chair, though I do promise to keep it short.

I made pancakes for breakfast. I fixed a plate for each of the two boys and went upstairs to take a shower, thinking Max's older brother could keep an eye on him while they ate together. I don't normally do this, because it's just asking for trouble...or mess...or choking...or SOMEthing. But the big kids had dentist appointments and we needed to get moving.

I was just stepping in the shower when I heard, "MO-O-O-O-O-O-M!!! Hurry -- COME HERE!!" I could hear the urgency in my son's voice, so turned off the shower and ran downstairs.

This is what I found.

I had been gone for 5 minutes.

Why was Max so messy? Well, you see, we eat peanut butter on our pancakes. The jar was still sitting out. So was the syrup. My older son finished eating his breakfast quickly and went in the other room to watch t.v.

Max kept eating...by himself.

I have never seen so much misplaced peanut butter in my life. Globs on the floor, blobs on the stools, smears up and down the front of his p.j.s; it was EVERYWHERE. I couldn't believe that much peanut butter could actually fit in one jar! Scroll back up to that first picture -- that jar, my friends, was BRAND NEW this morning. I broke the seal myself.

Now, to his credit (I guess), Max did try to clean things up. He was washing his hands when I found him. And apparently he had already tried wiping them off on the kitchen hand towel.

I took him into the little bathroom off the kitchen to clean up away from the rest of the peanut butter mess...and he had already done some washing up in there, too!!

In addition to the big plops and blobs, the floor was absolutely covered with little crumbles of peanut butter.
I can't even figure out how it got all the places it did. I mean, he left a very obvious trail, and you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to piece together where he had gone...but seriously, just exactly how do you get peanut butter on the mini-blinds?!?

It was on the baseboards...

...and also on the oven door.
It was on the window, the window sill, the brick wall...
...and even UNDER the stove??

He must have been flicking his fingers and flapping his hands to get the sticky peanut butter off, flinging the goo hither and yon.

There wasn't even time for me to throw a fit, or yell, or lecture. We had an appointment to get to. I cleaned up the largest plops as quickly as I could, threw Max in the shower right along with me and wiped and soaped and scrubbed (possibly a bit harder than necessary).

I walked right out of the house with the rest of the mess just...there.

With the exception of the pictures Max is actually in, the photos were taken after we returned home. (Yes, that's right -- AFTER the largest blobs were already gone!)

Let me recreate the mess for you in this way: the following is a photo of my kitchen; this is basically what The Great Peanut Butter Fiasco looked like.

We made it to the dentist appointments (albeit a few minutes late).

My daughter has a cavity.

It's POURING outside.

The mess is now cleaned up, and it's way too early for a glass of red wine.

I'm soothing my shattered nerves with an extra mug of strong coffee, chock full of real cream and extra sugar. I am going to go make some sandwiches (TURKEY, thankyouverymuch), and then we are going to go see the Wall-E matinee while eating the biggest bucket of popcorn they sell.

I'm clocking out.