  I never get used to the unbridled, monkey-like chaos that is produced by small children. Tonight, while Math was giving the children a bath, I went downstairs.
I went into the bathroom. We affecionately refer to it as the "West Virginia campsite" bathroom, since the previous owners of the house seemed to have worked very hard to give it that look. It features a half-installed, fiberglass shower stall, with the shower head fixture emerging from a ragged, gaping hole in the wall. The peel-and-stick, insta-linoleum floor is oddly mottled with grey, for reasons I've tried not think about. There is a towel rack which was hung at a puzzling, rakish angle. So two things strike me as I turn on the light. One, there is a empty toilet paper roll on the floor. I just put a fresh one in here yesterday. There is also no toilet paper to be seen, except tiny, incriminating shreds stuck to the floor. Two, there is a powder-blue sippy cup floating in the toilet. By some miracle the water looks clear. It's a bit like a crime scene. What happened to all the paper? Was the cup used to annoint the comode after the final flush of the paper that had been methodically disposed of?
I'll never know, as I didn't have the energy to quiz the demolition duo. These are the same two who, several evenings back, careened around the living room -- one with a plastic bucket, one with a laundry basket -- on their heads. They were shrieking with laughter and knocking into furniture and each other. The bucket made the careening more difficult since it provided zero visability. The basket at least had open slats to see out a little bit. Of course, they fought over which one would wear the bucket. 
