Messy Boys

We decided to cook over the fire pit tonight. Food tastes better outdoors, especially when you're eating hot dogs. J had picked up some good brats from Wegmans, and we ate them alongside a fresh fruit salad and some zuchinni, squash, onions, and mushrooms roasted up in basting oil over the fire as well. Finish that off with a s'more, and you can imagine what both of the boys looked like.

James' face was completely covered from cheek to cheek in marshmallow goop, bits of graham cracker, blueberry stains, and ketchup. At one point he had dropped the hot dog out of his bun and into his lap, so he had big globs of ketchup sticking to his shirt and his shorts as well. All the mess on his face didn't bother him a bit, but he's rather particular about keeping his hands clean. Any time he sensed he was getting some marshmallow or ketchup on his hands, he'd get up and rinse them off in the five gallon bucket under the leaky spigot, tracking through a mud puddle in the process. But at least he had clean hands.

Owen, on the other hand, had been continually dribbling peach juice down his front for the entire time we were outside. At various points he made a grab for my hot dog and my blueberries, achieving some success each time. He dived into the grass and managed to get some of that in his mouth whenever anyone wasn't looking, and he finished off the evening by eating oatmeal cereal in his high chair which he spread all over his face and hands.

It was bath time.

I stripped James off of everything but his socks and underwear, and tried to help J get Owen cleaned up enough to carry up to the tub. James reappeared a moment later, declaring that he had the hockey puck in his pocket.

The bath was run, Owen was put in, and then James climbed in after him. Almost immediately, he declared that he was going to pee in the tub.

"Don't pee in the tub James."
"But I need to pee in the tub."
"Can you wait until you're out of the bath?"
"No, I need to pee now."

I lifted him up, dripping everywhere, out of the bath, and set him on the toilet seat just as J cautioned me that he was probably slippery. Sure enough, he fell into the toilet with two little legs sticking up out of the bowl. He was retrieved, did his business, and then deposited back in the tub.

The actual bath part went smoothly. Owen laughed at everything James did, and James found the one remaining bath letter (the letter B) and held it in his mouth for the entire length of the bath. ("I'm just biting the letter B.") J asked him if he could think of any words that started with the letter B, and after thinking it over he decided that the letter M was a word that started with the letter B. We played the Imperial March, per his request, as he got out, and here he is looking like a Sith Lord. You can't see it, but the B is still in his mouth.

Afterwards we dressed them both in basketball shirts. We tried to get a photo of both of them smiling at the camera, and....well...this is what happened...