You have to laugh. Right?

“When kids hit 1 year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit.”
― Johnny Depp

Yep. I'm with you on this one Jonny.
(they also poo... a lot).

I think I need to accept the fact that - no matter how much I try - I will never be able to present my children to the public with clean faces, fingernails, clothing and bottoms.

Maybe if my little hatchlings were girls this may be possible.
But the fact is I have a household of boys - and boys like all things involving dirt, slime, bogies and noise.

I just need to accept this fact and move on. Embrace it even. No matter what the general public opinion is on this subject.

On a bus ride once I had an elderly gentleman man tell off Luca for making too much noise, saying "Children should be seen and not heard".
Well. I laughed. Possible even guffawed at this preposterous belief.
I won't be inviting him to ours for a cup of tea any time soon as the likelihood of him dropping dead from the noise level produced by my off-spring is very high.

Boys. They're a funny species.
"Funny" being both strange and hilarious. And stinky.

I'm saying this because I had an incident today where I'm sure my mothering ability and nose were in question by the public of West London.

Beni, Max and I were out this morning at a toy library/playgroup that our church runs every Friday at the church office venue. On our way home a drawing pin lodged itself in the wheel of the buggy which rapidly flattened the tyre and made it near impossible to push and I still had a 20 minute walk home. So I headed back to the high street where I located a bike store to repair the puncture. While we were waiting for the tyre to be fixed Beni gets a look of panic on his face, grabs his crotch and says "I have to do wees mamma!". Fortunately the church office are located just off the high street so we hightailed it back to the office to use their facilities.... but didn't make it in time. And I didn't have a change of clothes for him because he was already dressed in the spares I brought for the day.
Yeah toilet training is still going awesome...

I thought I caught a whiff of something decidedly rotten on our way back out the door but figured it was just a stinky bottom-burp from one of the boys.
On our way back up the high street to collect the buggy we were stopped by a group of people doing a non-smoking promotion thing. They had a big digital touch-screen thingie where you could put in your name and write a wee sentence then it prints it out onto a sticker.
So the promotion peeps were all like "Hi! Come on over here boys and try out this thing and you can get a sticker!". Beni weesie-pants-boy heads over and a guy lifts him up so he can type on the touch screen. And yeah, his face was pretty much inline with Beni's weesie-pants which must have smelt like a urinal...
Inside I was dying a little from embarrassment.
And then of course Max wants a turn and as he whips past me to be lifted up by the guy I realised where that decidedly rotten smell was emanating from...
And yeah, the poor guy's face was once again pretty much inline with Max's heavy nappy that smelt like death...
Inside my pride died a grim, painful, stinky death.

I could see the promotional people trying not to look at each other, nor be the one to mention the smells that eminated from my children.
Needless to say they looked relieved when we departed...

I could have explained the odours and that this isn't normal for them to be smelling of wees and poos, but actually that would be lying... and it would have only been in a vain attempt to mend my broken pride.
So I kind of had a wee giggle while I walked away. You have to laugh. Right?

And you know what? This is just how it's going to be for a while longer - life with young boys is stinky, dirty, loud and messy.

But Oh. My. Goodness. it's also a whole lot of fun.
Loud stinky fun, that is.

:::