Syrupy Sweetness

It was a dark and stormy night.  Actually it was, but thats not relevant to the story.  I was laying in bed nursing the baby to sleep when my five year old comes bounding in.  He jumped on the bed and said, "Ewan got out the syrup and squirted it all over the floor in the kitchen."  He seemed very pleased.  Probably that he was able to get his brother in trouble but also because its really amusing.  I put the baby in his bed and went down stairs to the kitchen.  The perpetrator ran past me and I told him to go clean himself up.  I was already sticking to the floor before I even got to the kitchen.  When my son ran out of the kitchen he took the stickiness with him.  What awaited me in the kitchen was a syrup version of a slip and slide.  A package of waffles lay on the counter.  There was no plate in sight.  I knew what he had tried to do, but when you accidentally poor syrup on the floor, and no one is around to see it except for the two year old, your little mind starts to think up awful things like, 'I will squirt some more out, already made a mess anyway'.

There was syrup foot prints smeared this way and that.  From the pantry to the dining room with a giant puddle right in the middle.  Half the two quart bottle was gone. And the smell. Oh the smell.  No more does maple syrup remind me of pancake breakfasts with turkey sausage and eggs.  Forever indelible in my brain will be a sticky floor and sore arms.

I scrubbed and scrubbed and mopped and mopped.  Lots of towels were used, an entire wash load in fact.  I enlisted my 10 year old son  to help with the drying.  He had a towel under each hand and one under his foot.  He scurried across the floor in small circular motions drying drying drying.  I laughed.  He laughed.  We both bust out laughing.  Meanwhile remember I sent my son to wash up?  Instead he hid in his bed.  So then I had that to clean.  Every rung up the ladder to his bed, the door knob, the walls, the rails.  All had to be washed.

When all was said and done it was pretty funny.  I actually didn't yell at him, hes only four and he was hungry and I was busy.  I told him he had to ask a big person from now on, which includes big sisters.  I am thinking after wrestling him into the shower they would much rather make him something to eat than deal with the aftermath of whatever mess he makes.  And who wouldn't laugh at a syrup slip and slide? My two year old however was stunned.  He just stood there.  Probably because the toy he was riding got stuck in the syrup.

 The victim. 

The weapon. 

 The perpetrator. 

And isn't he a cute perp?  As bad as this was, it was easier to clean up than the petroleum jelly my oldest got all over her toys and herself and her room when she was two.  I have never bought another big jar of that, only the little tiny ones for us now.  Way less mess can be made with that size.