If at first you don't succeed...

A week ago, I purposed in my heart to wake up before my children and read my Bible in peace. Lofty, right? I thought so! Years of being hauled from the depths of peaceful slumber by crying, hungry children have confirmed my suspicion that I am NOT a morning person. Despite trying to go to bed earlier, I am still crabby and my brain full of fog when I wake up every morning. So I decided to get up for devotions. Suffice it to say that I woke up early 7 days in a row, and only managed to read 2 chapters of Joshua in those 7 days. My kids internal "mom is gone" radar is apparently still functioning at full capacity, and I am joined by at least one child within 10 minutes of waking up. However, Satan apparently felt the need to haul in the big guns to thwart my morning devotions. I'll bet you never guess what I mean by "big guns"...

It wasn't the smell of roses I woke up to this morning. It was poop. The unmistakable eau de poop every mother is so very familiar with. I heard Amelia calling me from the bathroom. (this all took place around 6:30 a.m., by the way) I rouse myself to fully awake, and shuffle to the bathroom. There stands my beautiful daughter, with her beautiful golden hair streaming down. Legs are covered in poop. She is standing in a puddle of poop. And she is touching the poop with a look of horror. My vision of beautiful daughter was quickly transformed. What stood before me was not Amy, but Cousin Itt with her Poopylocks! She had pooped in a Pull-Up, a contraption invented to enthrall toddlers by impersonating underwear, and eternally frustrate mothers in it's very-underwear-like capacity to spill it's contents or fail to catch the intended contents all together. In this case, it appeared to be the latter: a mere smear was in the Pull-Up, and from the amount of poop smeared in Amy's hair and up and down her legs, I knew immediately there was missing poop somewhere in my house. Nevertheless, I hastened to plunk Amy in the tub and begin the poop elimination process - all while trying not to wake the rest of the sleeping brood or breathe in through my nostrils.

I left Amelia soaking in the tub, and went to tend to Rosalie, who had since woken up and asked for breakfast. I found her, literally trembling in horror, by the kitchen island. She had discovered a pile of poop on the chair on which she intended to sit. I sent her, still trembling and gagging, into the bathroom to watch over Amy, while I hauled said chair out to the tall grass to use a pressure sprayer on the...[gasp!]...wicker seat. This task accomplished, I returned to the house just in time to change Caleb's leaky poopy diaper, plunk him in the bath with his poopy sister, and wipe Rosalie, who had also pooped.

I dared not breathe a sigh of relief, for fear of sucking in some of the noxious fumes!