I don't know how he does it. Somehow, within the span of an eyeblink, the Dude goes from a relatively clean 2-year-old boy to the living embodiment of Peanuts' Pigpen. The Dude and dirt are attracted to each other like politicians and pork.
Other parents of boys warned me that this would happen. I pooh-poohed them, of course. I've been through this toddler phase once before. It couldn't be that different with a male child.
The Diva has always had an uncanny ability to cover herself with paint or markers or stickers during the 10 seconds your back was turned. There was even a memorable day when her hair stuck up like a fright wig, thanks to a run-in with a bottle of Elmer's glue.
As I keep discovering, the Dude is a completely different critter than his big sister. He is an equally delightful and, occasionally, frustrating kid but in entirely new ways.
Where she covered herself in art supplies, the Dude is attracted to good old-fashioned filth.
Each evening, when we strip him down for a bath, oceans of sand rain out of his shoes and socks. The size of the drifts are unrelated to how much sand he has been near during the day. The largest piles are often after mornings spent inside.
I'm baffled, too, and suspect there may be something going on that can only be explained by quantum physics.
At night, the remains of lunch and dinner are clumped in the hair on the right side of his head, since he's taken to running a fully loaded fork through it during mealtimes.
Now that we've entered the season of dead leaves, they flutter out of his pockets and, occasionally, diaper, which he has taken to treating like a pocketbook where he can store all of his treasures.
No matter how hard I scrub and inspect and scrub again, two seconds after I get him out of the tub and into his jammies, his face is grimy again. And, no, I don't have any idea where it comes from. My only guess is that his body has found a way to exude soil from his pores.
I continue to be surprised by how much of a mess kids can make and in how short of a time. Before I had them in the house, I understood the mess on an intellectual level. Conditions on the ground defy what I thought I knew. The ground is frequently a minefield of little toys, a couple of marbles and, of course, sand.
My husband and I do our best to keep up. Before the Dude arrived, we could hold our own against the litter one kid creates.
On very special cleaning days, maybe once a month, we'd play our favorite game called "What's in the couch?" where we'd whip out all of the vacuum attachments, pile the sofa cushions into a fort for the Diva and commence to sucking up dry cereal and doll shoes and kid jewelry.
We're both a little afraid to play the game now. It's been just long enough that whole ecosystems have formed in the couch's crevices. If word gets out, the EPA might declare it an endangered habitat and cart it off to a national park. Which would be fine, come to think of it. A new couch would be awesome.
A full-time housekeeper would also be awesome. But with two kids, we can't possibly afford one. Once the kids are gone, we won't really need one.
I can't lay this all at the Dude's feet. His sister contributes her fair share, too. Just this morning as I was trying to get her lunch packed and kids out the door, I was also trying to clean the inside of her lunchbag and backpack, both of which were inexplicably sticky. The Diva denies all knowledge of how this might have happened. Mistakes, her faux-innocent look seems to say, were made.
In truth, while I make it sound like the house is a continual disaster area, it's not really that bad. OSHA and/or Merry Maids don't need to stage an intervention. On any given day, the place is not actively dirty.
While my little Italian grandmother, the one who used to wash her walls every week, would be appalled, most normal
visitors aren't afraid of sitting on the furniture or using the bathroom.
But since the Dude started walking, there is always some new small mess to tidy up and less time to do so. We always know where they are, thanks to his sister, who takes great glee in ratting him out for, say, scribbling on the TV with a purloined marker.
It'll be interesting to see how things change when they are old enough to be trusted with the vacuum cleaner and some window cleaner.
Adrienne Martini is freelance writer, instructor at the State University College at Oneonta and Hartwick College, mom to Maddy and Cory and wife to Scott and author of "Hillbilly Gothic," published by the Free Press.
