THE HONEY INCIDENT: IN WHICH IT ENDED UP SCHLEPPED ACROSS THE HARDWOOD FLOORS AND ALL WAS WRONG WITH THE WORLD FOR OH, ABOUT 20 MINUTES OR SO

No, I don't have any pictures. Hell, they're lucky they're still alive to tell the tale.

But in a nutshell...

It's a lazy Sunday morning. We're not really wanting to pop out of bed at our usual 5:45am, but, of course, the dynamic duo began chatting (loudly) before the sun ever even came up. Usually, we'll pick a Saturday or Sunday to sleep in a little, and I'll leave out on the kitchen counter a couple of bananas, some cheerio snack bags, granola bars, etc. and their milk/juice sippy cups ready in the fridge for them to snack on before we eventually roll out of bed to make breakfast. But something caught their attention that particular morning, and neither one of them ever actually made it past the hallway.

Instead, atop their 4-foot dresser and right next to our very tattered and torn copy of Winnie-the-Pooh (which we've been reading pretty religiously of late) is a small plastic bottle of honey (as twisted coincidence would have it) with a very long teaspoon. I tend to keep it on hand for those evenings when one or the other of them is racked with a hacking cough, which, unfortunately, seems to happen more and more with these Northern California autumns, although, thankfully, it doesn't ever seem to turn into anything more, and almost always (not surprisingly) seems to dissipate immediately after a 3am dose of bee poop.

Just as we must have both drifted back to sleep for a few precious minutes, I'm suddenly awakened by the deafening silence (all parents of toddlers know this frightfully well), very shortly followed by pitter-patters past our bedroom doorway, down the hallway, into the bathroom, up onto the step stool, and then the sound of the faucet.

"Saia, is that you?"

"Yes, ma'm," she says. "I'm washing my hands."

"Oh, okay, baby."

"They're sticky," she lets slip.

[Okay. Roll over. Pillow on top of head...]

"STICKY?!?!?"

To their credit, they very clearly tried to NOT make a mess, as it was their very obvious intention from the look of their cheeks, hair and clothes that they meant to devour the entire jar in one sitting, and while I was standing there, mouth agape, processing, they were both on their way back from the bathroom with dripping wet towels (bath towels, mind you; not hand towels) trying desperately to remedy the gooey situation. And I just stood there with my hands on my cheeks looking around for some semblance of the bedroom I'd left the night before as they scrubbed and scoured and tried to sop up all the sweet gumminess from their carpet, the floor, their bed posts, their sheets, the mouths of their babies, their newly painted mini-pumpkins, their stuffed animals, the step stool propped strategically against the dresser, and maybe a book or two -- I really couldn't tell at that point.

But as luck was very clearly on their side that day, I must've stood there just long enough to come down the other side of Mount Eruptus because I really could hardly contain my laughter at the point that I finally was able to will myself into Mama-mode. So, rolling EVERYTHING up into the fly-paper-like rug, I tried my very best to frown and scowl and lecture them all the way to the washing machine as they tearfully dragged their nasty little pillows behind them, but by the time I realized that there were a million little honey-laden footprints covering every square inch of the house I was nearly rolling on the floor in tears.

So, no one got punished. No one lost any animals. Everything's been degummified. And all is right with the world again.

But it's only Monday.