The Messiest Kid Alive!

I believe that Emily is deserving of this title. She was such an easy baby. And despite "the terrible two's", for the most part she has maintained her sweet lil' disposition. There's just one thing....she's a complete mess! A tiny tornado, even. Mike and I have nicknamed her "pig pen". I've never met such a messy kid! Once, twice, sometimes three times a day I am scrubbing floors, walls, and Emily herself in an effort to clean up after this kid. You may remember "The Hot Sauce Disaster" from back in February. That was just a sign of things to come. She draws on the walls, she draws on herself, she rolls in the mud, dumps full cups of milk over her head, empties the pantry and it's contents onto the floor...and that's just scratching the surface. A couple of weeks ago, she arose at 4:30 in the morning and used a WHOLE TUBE of lipstick on herself, my comforter, and worst of all, the carpet in our bedroom. After some extensive online research, I learned that lipstick, with all of it's pigments and wax is the worst thing to remove from carpet. Lucky me. After scrubbing for 2 hours while she looked on, I noticed that she had disappeared from my side and gotten very quiet. Not good. I looked in her room....no Emily. I called down the stairs...silence. I searched the downstairs, calling her name...nothing. I started to panic. There was no way out of the house. The doors were locked. Where was she?! And then I heard a giggle from under the dining room table...where Emily sat with a whole bag of blueberries that she scored from the freezer while I was distracted with the lipstick mess. She had rubbed the blueberries all over her body, drawing tribal-looking designs around her face and down her nose in addition to rubbing them onto the table legs and carpeting. AHHHHHHH!

This brings us to the pictures I took yesterday. After a late night of 4th of July festivities and a day at the pool, Emily passed out on the playroom floor. This is completely out of character for her. Despite all of my attempts, she gave up her afternoon nap weeks ago. She won't even sleep in the car when we take long roadtrips. She's a ball of energy! She fell asleep as I was making dinner. I wanted her to go to bed on time that night, so I woke her up. She was NOT a happy camper. So I decided to turn her and Ava loose in the backyard while I finished making dinner. Bless her heart, she found a cup that was left out from the cookout. She used it to scoop up mulch and give her self a mulch shower, dumping cupfull after cupfull over her head!

Here she is, so tired...and so dirty!





But look at her sweet baby face! I couldn't love this kid more...even if she is the dirtiest kid on the block.




3 shampoos and rinses and she still had mulch clinging to her precious little skull when I combed her baby-fine sunbleached hair this morning.

Today, after she created yet another big mess in our playroom, a friend stopped by. "Why are you making such big messes, Emily?" my friend inquired. She smiled her giant, bright Emily smile and answered, "I YIKE to be DIRTY. Yes I do!" Great.