We've been busy here at the Rumpus. Kevin and I are both back at work after a delightfully long family-filled summer. We have a great nanny, Cristina, who watches Linden two mornings a week while Kevin is teaching and lucky Daddy gets to be with her the rest of the time. Eli continues at his school where his teachers report that he is a great classroom ambassador and is really growing up into a smart boy. As if we didn't know that!

Eli has always taken an interest in housework which pleases his mother to no end. He especially loves running the vacuum cleaner and using the swiffer mop. I have a funny feeling that this infatuation with cleaning will wane just about the time when he is old enough to do it unsupervised.

Anyway... this morning, I mentioned I was going to clean the bathrooms and Eli enthusiastically exclaimed that he wanted to help. We suited up with rubber gloves and paper towels and I gave him a spray bottle of vinegar to clean the sink with. I figured that vinegar is non-toxic and won't damage anything if he starts going haywire with it or gets it on his clothes. Bathroom #1 gets cleaned beautifully with my little helper on sink duty while I did toilet, floor and tub. We moved into bathroom #2 and just as I lean over to scrub the toilet, Eli starts to scream. He squirted vinegar IN HIS EYE. So I put him, fully clothed, into the bathtub and start flushing his eye under the faucet, practically waterboarding the poor child, meanwhile hollering to Kevin "Google 'vinegar in the eye... VINEGAR IN THE EYE!!!'"

Thought traumatized, Eli was fine after a good eye flushing and actually wanted to go back to cleaning the bathroom. So we dried him off, changed his clothes and went back into the bathroom to continue.

A few minutes later, Eli says to himself, "Now I'm not going to squirt it in my eye 'cause I've already done that."

He. Is. So. Weird.