The Cleaner

Yesterday, I volunteered to clean our bathroom floor to ceiling. Now, before you start going, “Awww,” and thinking I’m a great guy, check the calendar. Yesterday was the Superbowl. My sudden desire to clean was a calculated effort to gain permission to watch the game with as few interruptions as possible with a one year old and a 3 year old.

After gathering my supplies (Beer? Check. Other beer? Check) and heading downstairs, I noticed I had acquired an assistant. Namely, Elijah. A-ha! Cleaning the bathroom plus keeping Eli out of Diana’s hair? I was just racking up points.

Eli turned out to be a fairly effective helper monkey. I put him on “Fantastik Heavy Duty Antibacterial” spray gun patrol. After spending a few minutes in “Time Out” for putting his lips on the nozzle, we got our system down. I’d point in the general direction of the tub/sink/toilet and he’d unleash a torrent of SC Johnson’s finest. Then I’d get down to business scrubbing. Elijah also felt it was his duty to point out all the places I missed.

We did a pretty darned good job on the tub and the sink, but we really went to town of the toilet. Elijah just murdered that porcelain. Once I thought we were good, he’d blast it again with another barrage. I finally had to wrestle the gun away from him because I was sick of having my face so close to toilet water.

I stood back and admired our handiwork. The chemicals probably altered both Eli and my DNA for the worse, but man that toilet sparkled.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of butt cheek. And before I could say anything, Elijah was sitting on our newly scrubbed toilet, undoing everything we had just worked so hard to accomplish.

“What are you doing? We just cleaned that!”

“I’m just going pee pee, daddy.”

“No you aren’t! I have a nose!”

Realizing that screaming at a 3 year old about going to the bathroom was how weird fetishes start, I swallowed by rage. In the end, I had to hand it to him. That kid has timing.

My bid to watch the Superbowl was in vain. Both Elijah and Luca spent the game trading off between crawling all over me and standing directly in front of the TV. I’m not exactly sure who one. Budweiser?