things mothers do...

So, not moments ago Anson, my 4 year old said, "I put wipes in the furnace." He stated this quite matter of factly, no fear of getting in trouble or what else may come of his statement. (this surprised me a little, especially since we have had long discussions about NEVER putting anything down the furnace vents.)

Now lets flash back at least a week ago, when I came into my front room to find at a million wipes pulled out and strewn across the floor... someone had some fun, and I know who, Ella, my one year old. Her favorite pass time? Wipe distribution.

I quickly picked them up and shoved them in a ziploc bag for later use... I'm not going to throw out a million perfectly good wipes! The next day I was searching EVERYWHERE for those wipes, any wipes with no luck, so I trucked down to the basement to recover some wipes from the costco supply...

Now flash back to present...
Anson, "I put wipes in the furnace."
Dacia, "why?! you need to get those out"
Anson, "But I can't reach, mom"
Dacia, "You need to try"

Alas he couldn't get them, so I am now on the floor reaching my hand into the cavernous vent that leads to our heat source... oh, I found the wipes... yea that bag of wipes that had vanished... umm, something rattles... I reach around blindly to grab whatever toy has accompanied the wipes. I pull out a cheerio, a lego... who knows what else... then my hand brushes against something soft. I quickly retract my hand and shake my head. Grimacing I grab one of the million ziploc baggie wipes... I briefly think about ignoring the fact that there is another foreign substance/object in my vent and going about my day... but I know that I can't. I am a mother and that is one of my long list of responsibilities... cleaning up gunk. Well I cover my hand with a wipe (as if it could fully protect me from whatever I might encounter) and I reach back into the abyss. I search relentlessly for whatever it was, when all of a sudden it is rediscovered. I envelop it in the protective wipe and pull it out of the vent...

I look down to see that I have caught a....

melted chocolate bar... with peanuts to be exact. Eew gross. Gross, but definitely not the worst thing I could have found. My 4 year old says "what's that... poop?" Luckily it wasn't... or a diaper or a rodent... or many other things that I would have been completely disgusted and sickened by.

Oh the things mothers do...