Clear the steps, damn it.

TB or NTB. I fear my recent posts have bordered on the former. Just to keep things real, I will share a brief bub-related incident from earlier this evening. The bub and I spent the hour before dinner hanging out in our carpeted basement. We did some laundry. I folded the clothes. He threw them around. I loaded the dryer. He closed the dryer door six or seven times in the process. We read the books I purchased at our parish's toddler garage sale this weekend. "We" played with the cords that (used to) connect the VCR to the television. We picked up the phone and shot the breeze with Grammy.

As I headed up the stairs to start preparing bubby's dinner, I assumed he was right behind me. Because he sometimes takes his time climbing the steps, I went on in to the kitchen and got to work. I didn't hear much, but falsely assumed that all was well and that he had merely paused, as he often does, at the landing where his stroller is parked to try to fasten and unfasten its buckles.

I don't know how you use your stairs, but in addition to using mine for the obvious, I also use them as temporary holding zones. Items that need to travel either upstairs or downstairs wait on the steps until I pause to take them to their homes. My mom employed a similar system when I was growing up. She placed clean and folded laundry in stacks on our back stairs. When you headed up to your room, you were supposed to take your stack with you (and, of course, put it away). For being good kids, my siblings and I were horrible with the laundry stacks. Mostly, we stepped around them. I have distinct memories of heading downstairs in the morning before school and grabbing one item--a pair of socks or a clean bra, for example--and then heading upstairs and leaving another two feet of MEP laundry behind. My mom certainly deserves your sympathy for having to put up with ingrates like myself. Funny thing is, my stair-clearing efforts have not improved much even now that I have my own home and family. On the landing right outside my bedroom sits my opened and semi-unpacked suitcase (now serving as remote drawer) from last weekend and the pile of stuff I tossed out of it from its previous use a month prior. A variety of laundry baskets, piles of clothes, and empty shopping bags wait on the landing as well. The area could easily be mistaken for a Goodwill donation center. But, if not for this large landing, my steps would be in even worse shape. A dirty but folded pair of jeans and a pillow sham have been sitting on my steps heading upstairs for ten days. A 145 ounce container of laundry detergent had been sitting on the steps leading to the basement since this morning, when I purchased it from Target.

That's right, the detergent had been there. It had been there until the bub moved it. As I was happily getting his dinner together, I noted with pleasure that the bub seemed to have found a way to keep himself occupied. Seconds later, I heard his familiar, "Mom. Mom." I turned the corner and saw that my freakishly strong bub had lifted the laundry detergent up two stairs so that it was in our back room. He had also figured out how to open the bottle. What's more, he had poured it (thankfully, not all 145 ounces of it) all over the floor. A puddle at least a foot and a half in diameter greeted me. On his clothes alone, the bub had poured enough for an entire load. The smell of spring rain filled the air. The bub looked up at me with a huge smile as if to say, "Look what I did mom. NTB."

Thanks to all the code browns, my emergency reaction skills are fairly sharp. NTB. I removed the bub's detergent-soaked clothes. (He helped me out by then removing his diaper.) I wet a wad of paper towels and got to work rinsing off his hands and feet (yes, of course he had been stepping in the puddle). I placed him on the carpet and bid him not to move. I returned to the scene with more paper towels and began mopping up the puddle. The bub wanted in on the action. He grabbed some paper towels, got down on his knees, and started spreading the soap around. I then had to pause and re-rinse his newly-soaped hands and feet. Keep in mind, he has no diaper on. Luckily for me, he kept himself entertained by riding his bouncing zebra bareback (and bare-butt) while I finished the clean-up.* We visited the sink for one final rinse. I wrestled him into a diaper and, wearing only said diaper, he ate his dinner like a champ.

The first thing I did after I put him to bed tonight? Carried that bottle of detergent downstairs to the laundry room. NTB. What's on your steps?


*Note to bub's friends and their moms--the zebra has been sanitized.