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What do you do when you catch your 10-month-old chewing on a used plunger? Gag and scream and rip it away from him. And then continue to scream as you literally wash his mouth out with soap and water.

What does he do? Giggle and smile.

Thus starts another football season. Joe is gone for trip No. 1 of this 08-09 sports year.

I know what you're thinking. How does this happen? How could anyone be such a terrible mother? I have been asking myself the same thing since about 8 p.m. last night.

I got home late. I thought I could leave the office by 5:15 at the latest and I walked through my door at 6:20 p.m. I could tell my pregnant nanny was exhausted and irritated when she walked out the door with minimal chit-chat.

Jack was hungry. Brennan was still taking a nap. Joe was already heading to Chicago.

I quickly fed Jack to try to allow him to eat dinner before our eating machine got up and attacked his older brother's food. I grabbed some grub and as soon as I sat down to eat, I heard the music player from his crib playing in the monitor. He wasn't crying so I let him play there as I shoved a diet meal into my mouth. Jack took forever with his dinner as he does every night but 15 minutes later, B wasn't crying yet. It was getting close to 7 p.m. so I knew I had to get him up and dinnered.

A jar of baby meat, rice and veggies and pears later, the baby was fed. Jack was still eating his dinner. It was going on an hour of eating dinner.

I suggested we go for a walk in the neighborhood before bed. Jack was excited and quick shoved everything that was left into his mouth.

Here's where the plunger comes in.

Since B has been mobile we've made a rule that the half bath's door must always, always be closed. We all know the rule. BFR likes to unravel the toilet paper, throw things in the potty and get in under the sink.

I am not sure where things went wrong. (Switch to slow-motion present tense ...)

Jack and I are in the bathroom with Brennan. He is unraveling the toilet paper -- a battle I decide against fighting right then. Jack is doing his business and I am looking for bug spray. We all leave the room. Jack shuts the door.

I put on B's socks and shoes and let him loose to play for a minute. I still haven't found the bug spray but pretty much give up on the idea. We wait for Jack (again). Jack attempts to put on his shoes. He asks me to check to make sure they were on the correct feet. I take my eyes off B to look at Jack's shoes and look up to see the bathroom door is now open. I walk toward the room and see my precious, angelic baby with the plunger end up in the air. I scream and lunge. I scream again and again. Jack runs into the bathroom and I tell him what B has done. He screams. We both scream over and over as I splash water on B's face. Brennan just laughs.
"Mama! Brennan ate stinky!!!!!!" Jack shrieks, gags and shudders at the same time.
I throw up in my mouth a little.

I then decide to put a teeny bit of hand soap on my hand and literally wash his mouth. I try to dig out the germs that might be floating in his teeny-tiny mouth; I may be still may screaming intermittently. Brennan bites me. He bites me very, very hard. And I swear. Jack, the word police, doesn't dare call me out. He is likely thinking, "Oh shit!" too.

Meanwhile, Brennan is thinks this is also hilarious.

What do you do? What do you do?!

I tried to walk it off. I tried to reason with him but all I could see (and still see) is the image of him with that thing. Is there anything, anything worse? I remember writing a blog about Jack eating a ladybug. Big deal! Big freaking deal! That was likely a source of protein. But this?!

I pushed forward with the walk. I locked up the house, grabbed my phone and keys and Jack and I silently walked outside. Neither of us spoke of the severity of what we'd just experienced. I unlocked the car to get the stroller out and realized there were no house keys on my keys. That's right because Joe gave them to our friend who's staying with us. No biggie, I thought. I will just call the two friends who have keys. Guess what? Neither have them anymore. They both gave them back to Joe months ago. Good to know. I walked the perimeter of the house. All the windows were shut. That's right. We're safe... safely locked outside! About a half an hour later, I called Joe. He was in K-zoo and didn't have his house key either. He'd left it for me ... on the kitchen table ... in the house. Nice.

Jack started to panic a little. Will we have to sleep outside? What if I have to go potty? How are we going to get in?

I noticed our bedroom windows (second floor) are open. I decide to put the kids in the sun room and attempt to jump onto the roof from the deck. If only our ladder had one more step. At one point I was hanging off the edge of my roof. Seriously, my leg was dangling. Jack was ready with the cell phone if anything happened. My three-year-old was the one who put the kabash on this idea.

"Um ... Mama ... that's just not going to work."

(Add tall ladder to my next shopping list, by the way.)

So now B is getting tired, Jack is getting restless and Joe is helpless calling me over and over.
Our visitor is working and can't really be reached.

He got home at 11:15. 11:15. Yes, I said 11:15. P.M. In the night-time. To quote Jack,"It got dark out on us."

I could have met my Dad and gotten his key in that time. I could have driven to my Nanny's out-of-town home and back in that time. If I had only known. But our friend was broadcasting a local baseball game and wouldn't you know? Extra innings!

I did take those two hours as a great time to talk to Jack about giving some of his millions of toys to charity. We were able to go through most of them and create a hefty pile to give to an orphanage for boys in Detroit. Sitting on the floor out there I realized just how many toys the boys have ... wow. Jack's only contention was they had to share with each other. We read a lot of books. And we took a lot of things out of Brennan's mouth, including a dried up leaf from a Jack art project. Awesome.

Both boys were whipped when my friend showed. And he felt terrible. He had no idea we'd been waiting that long and insisted he would have left. It was my own fault this happened. I think it falls under the "terrible mom" category. A quick change and bottle and B was in bed within 10 minutes. Jack was too wound up to go down until after midnight.

I curse road trips.