Kids are filthy little carrier monkeys...

...and I don't care if you judge me. Because while they are most certainly adorable and providers of endless humor, my kids have GOT to be the most disgusting multi cellular creatures outside of my compost bin. Sometimes I just can't even wrap my brain around the things that they do. And I'm not even talking about the gross-yet-relatively-innocuous shit they do every single day, like managing to get boogers on my dress pants without fail. I seriously don't remember the last time I went to work WITHOUT a snot stain on the leg of my pants or the lapel of my shirt. This, of course, is in addition to the ever-present blob of reeking baby hork on my shoulder. My clients probably wonder secretly to themselves "glad they appointed the hobo to help me out with this assault rap". I could only just look at them and say "my kids are vile" in the hopes that they too have children and know how easily it is for them to soil you.

My oldest son: Yesterday evening I went into the bathroom and saw him taking his finger, cleaning some toothpaste up, and putting it in his mouth. This seems innocent enough until you realize that the toothpaste he was cleaning up happened to be located on the toilet seat. "Nonononononono NOOOOOOO!!!!" And then I uttered a phrase that, like many others prior to having children, I would never have dreamt was necessary...."Don't lick the toilet seat!!!" Now, I know the first question would be "Why the hell is there toothpaste on the toilet seat in the first place?" How the hell should I know. All I know is that toothpaste is ALWAYS SOMEWHERE. They get it on me every time I go into the bathroom. Toothpaste from kids brushing their teeth is like bacteria from a person coughing in a movie theater. You may not be aware that it's happening, or how it's going on...but you're getting that shit all OVER you and you're gonna pay for it later. Well, in their haste to get me covered in it, they managed to toss a little bit on the toilet seat for good measure? I don't know. It simply matters that it was there and my son was eating it....off of the place you put your butt when you poop. And by the way, he doesn't like how Listerine tastes any more than I do. Perhaps something Pavlovian sticks.

My youngest son: Aka...the "Bath Crapper". Now, all of my children at least dabbled in bath crapping. However, the difference between my youngest son and his two siblings, is that he does it so often I actually think he ENJOYS defiling the water we clean him in. My wife and I had a discussion, after his most recent incident, about what was worse: his runny, breast-feeding poops or solid-food, small human poops? We can do this because we've experienced both. The debate was about WATER defecation and nothing else. Oddly enough, there was some disagreement about which one would be worse. And although I think her reasoning was faulty, I couldn't argue with a woman who had caught my oldest son's poop in her hand after catching him straining in the bathroom just PRIOR to his own bath some years ago. I mean, that alone makes a person somewhat of a poopy expert in my book.

My daughter: The girl ALWAYS has her hands in her pants. I thought that this behavior was reserved for males. Al Bundy, Michael Jackson, that dude from Minot's basketball team that was always fiddling with the inside of his waistband...GUYS. Not girls. Little girls are supposed to smell like flowers and skip rope and play with barbies...not dig around in their underwear. I have to remind my daughter to wash her hands so often that one would think I was encouraging on OCD. But she hasn't reached the developmental milestone just yet, apparently, that puts hand washing immediately after "touching one's butt".

God, they're just so GROSS. And those are just snippets. On top of it, they eat fruit snacks that they left in their car seats over the weekend. They swallow the stuff that they cough up when they're sick. They let the snot run down from their noses into their mouths. I have to TELL them to blow their nose...otherwise they'd simply let that circle continue to play out. They don't flush the toilet. Their room looks like a scene from hurricane Katrina's landfall. They wipe their hands on their shirts. They wife their faces on their shirts. They put peanut butter in each other's hair. The other day, my daughter had her head in my wife's lap and my youngest son vomited in her hair.

THESE THINGS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN...until college.