Cloud Dough...and then a HUGE mess

Well folks, sickness has entered our house and so Claire had to stay home from school for a couple of days.  I didn't want the two of them to sit in front of the tv all day and I didn't want them bouncing off the walls either (they were supposed to be resting after all).  So I looked on my faithful Pinterest 'kids crafts' board and found something called, 'Cloud Dough'.  It's 8 cups of flour, mixed with 1 cup of oil (I used baby oil).  When mixed together, the flour become mold-able but light - sort of like damp white sand.  Or even a little like good packing snow.  Of course the kids loved it.  And made a huge mess...but that's not the mess I referred to in the title.  I'll get to that soon.  The kids played with the cloud dough for nearly an hour.  Happily!  Together!  A win for mommy!  But like I said, it did make a mess and I was worried about the carpet (as you'll see in the pictures).  I didn't want that white stuff to stick in there and I didn't want the oil to stain our clothes.  So as soon as the kids were finished, I grabbed the Dyson and sucked up the flour on the carpet.  Luckily it came up pretty easily.  Then I striped down the kids and tossed our clothes in the wash, and ran upstairs to put on a clean pair of pants (other ones were covered in flour)....aaaaand here's where I'll pause the story to show adorable pictures of the kids playing with the cloud dough.  I'll continue the story in a minute.  For now, here's the kids...

Just starting out and figuring this white stuff out!

Making some discoveries

YOU! :)

My little sick patient.  Notice the lovely redness under her nose from wiping her snot?  Yeah it's twice as bad now.  Poor girl :(

So proud of herself - she made a "sand castle" with her cup

Trying to make a sand castle too (don't you love his tongue out?)

such a cool sensory activity!

Ah yes, the mess.  But not THE mess.

Looks like they had fun, right?  They did!  I highly recommend cloud dough.  Good times.

Annnnyway, back to the story.  So I went upstairs to change into another pair of pants.  I left them alone for a minute or two - TOPS.  As I pull my pants on, Claire comes in my room and says, "Alex pooped in his diaper."  I tell her okay, I'll be down in a minute. This is not unusual for her to alert me to a dirty diaper.  She's very interested in poop.  And then she says it:  "But Mommy, it came out of his diaper."  Oh great.  His diaper leaked, I think.  "Dere's poopy on da floor."  Oh God.

I run downstairs.  I find my son standing on the couch, happily bouncing around on the back cushion.  I don't see anything alarming at first because my couch is brown.  Then I see the wall.  There's a brown hand print on the wall.  Oh no, please don't let that be....Yep, a poop hand print.  On my wall.  Then I see Alex's legs.  They're covered in liquid poo.  Then Claire shows me the floor on the other side of the couch where there's a few small piles of poop that's already started to seep into the carpet.  Then she shows me their "bridge" (the top of the toy box they have positioned in between the arm of the couch and the cat tree which they use as a slide).  There's a nice brown smear mark.  I stop looking around at that point and just grab him and hold him at arm's length saying, "OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod" over and over.  Meanwhile, Alex is trying to climb on me so he can rest his poopy bum on my hip.  No thanks, not happening. I ran him up the stairs and first attempted to change his diaper on his changing table.  I quickly deduced that he was not going to get clean with wipes alone.  Into the bath he went.  Thankfully, for once Claire didn't insist on joining him.  I think she realized she'd get oozed on.  As I was cleaning him, I kept finding more poo.  In between his toes, behind his ears, on his elbow.  OMG EW.  And all I could think about was my couch.  What was downstairs waiting for me?  I finally got the boy clean and realized it was lunch time.  I threw something together for them to eat, plopped them in front of the computer, served them their lunches, turned on a tv show I know would hold their attention, and worriedly went into the living room to further inspect the dreaded couch.

Oh wow it was worse than I thought.  After carefully looking and smelling, I was able to discover his poop trail.  I made a diagram which explains what I *think* was his trail, based on the smearings of poo on the couch.  (please note this photograph was taken 2 weeks ago and no pictures were taken at the time of investigation or until after all evidence was cleaned up.  No one needs to see that)

Behold:  The path of crap!

I hope you can read my writing.  It's tough with a touch pad.

Aaaanyhoo as you can imagine it was simply breathtaking.  And a joy to clean up.  Thank goodness we have a little Bissel hand vac that we use to shampoo the stairs and couches (although I never dreamed I'd be using it for something of this magnitude).   After a few hours of spraying, scrubbing, and sucking, my couch is sparkling clean.  And now I can laugh about the whole situation.  But at the time it was not funny...and I was wondering where in the heck the Candid Camera guys were.

So there you have it.  Cloud dough and a HUGE mess.  Whew, glad that's done.