Oh, yeah... it's always been this way!

My good friend Jen, out of sunny CA, called today to commiserate with my recent experiences with the children. Seems that she can relate as her daughter recently stuck a wooden QTip in her toddler brother's ear (far enough to land them in urgent care), as well as gave their kitty's whiskers a very short trim. All in one day. Thank God I'm not alone in all of this.

Jen also reminded me that this Katie-mess-making stuff is not so new, as evidenced from an old email she forwarded to me today. To think this was written almost EXACTLY three years ago to the date (sigh)...

Recipe for Disaster:

1 container Vaseline
1 bottle Baby Powder
A few dashes of Baby Oil
1 Extra Large bottle of Baby Lotion
A two-and-a-half-year old

Place all ingredients in a room unsupervised for 15 minutes. Be sure that it is very quiet in the room before entering it, otherwise the recipe is not working correctly.

Enter room to find mixture of the ingredients throughout the room, rubbed evenly in the carpet, on the walls, curtains, back of a rocking chair and evenly distributed throughout the toddler's hair. IMPORTANT: You will want to clean, but this mixture is impenetrable. Let dry a few hours until carpet changes to a dingy color.

After carpet is adequately ruined, walls are stained and the toddler's hair has been washed using shampoo, baking soda and other home remedies, you should have a disaster well on its way. Now dry the toddler's hair, put cornstarch in it to bring out the Vaseline, and you should have a complete disaster, such as the one pictured here.

We recently tried this recipe for Complete Disaster in our home just after placing our house on the market and it worked wonderfully. We also found that similar results can be achieved by substituted lipstick and eyeshadow for baby powder and Vaseline, which we tried on our Open House day. Enjoy!

Not much has changed since the last use of the recip... but I will let you know that you can exponentially increase the quantity of COMPLETE DISASTER if you add another child to the recipe.