This dish is microwave safe.

I will forever regret not taking a photo of the sight of which I am about to write. Sometimes though, your reaction gets the better of you and the moment is gone. I’m sure you will all appreciate that fact, although I think this picture would have spoken volumes about our summer with Finn. He continues to shock me at every turn, becoming more and more a different animal to contend with. I have about four different blog posts bubbling around my mind on him right now as he is a constant source of material. Here’s the latest.

It was 4 pm yesterday (now you know this story is going south.) All afternoon I had been thinking how wonderful it would be to write about the morning we spent at Finn’s new “school” where I walked in hoping he’d pass their maturity evaluation, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that all that meant was that they wanted to know if he’d play without clinging to my side! They gladly accepted him and his shock of summer white hair into their program, promising me at least two hours a week of time with all three kids in school. I was elated; not only about the break, but the program, at a nearby Methodist church, which is staffed with the four warmest, most welcoming women teachers I could have imagined. Logan even wanted to go there!

Fast forward several hours and I am cooking dinner with a group containing four, five, six and seven year old girls upstairs playing house (with Finn tagging along.) I cannot describe the level of pitch that those four ages can reach when screaming, but I can tell you I have never flown up a flight of stairs so fast.

I should back up and say that when searching for Finn’s bear earlier in the morning, I picked up the distinct smell of poop in the playroom. A quick look around produced no source, so I moved on my way, vowing to come back later and figure it out. But the girls found the culprit for me - a nice, compact and somewhat petrified (forgive me) turd, methodically placed and waiting for them in our play kitchen’s microwave. I was speechless.

And I asked him, “Finn, did you put that poop there?”

“Yeah Mommy!” he said excitedly.

“Why did you do that, Finn?” I needed to know.

“Why Mommy?” he asked back innocently.

And there you have it. With no explanation possible, I grabbed some tissue, removed the specimen and with a flush, the smell was gone and the girls stopped screaming. Yes, my mind crossed over the conversations at neighbors’ dinner tables about the poop in the Anderson’s microwave. I wondered what those families would think, likely not getting the whole story from their young girls’ mouths. All I could do was laugh.

In the end, it didn’t matter. Poop is just poop and Finn is definitely curious about it. I hope to never again see it in a microwave and to only see it in toilets soon.

Nothing like filling up the witching hour with some good ‘clean’ fun.