Meagan has a knack for making messes

Meagan seems to be an early bird. She almost always gets up before I do. On days where Nate is still at home when she gets up, it's not too much of a problem. But sometimes Nate's already left for work when she gets up, and then she seems to take advantage of more or less being on her own for a bit. This morning, I woke up and went into the kitchen to find my purse on the floor. Meagan had taken all my credit-card sized things (ID, driver's license, insurance cards, etc.) out and spread them around. There was also a package of gum that she'd taken out. Every single piece was unwrapped on the floor, and several of them were half-chewed and spit back out. Yuck. While I was picking that up, she ran off down the hall. Since Bethany was still asleep, she couldn't go play in her room. It got too quiet, so after I picked up my purse, I went to she what she was up to. I found her in the bathroom, squirting Nate's hair gel all over the counter.

You'd think she'd used up her quota for messes for the day, but there was more. At lunch she spilled milk all over the table, herself and the floor, but the worst mess came later in the day. She was helping me do some laundry, mostly by shoving stuff in the dryer after I took it out of the washer, or dragging clothes over to put in the washer. She saw me put detergent in the washer, and wanted to do it, too, but I wouldn't let her. A couple hours later, she was upstairs watching a movie, and I noticed that the room smelled extra fresh, for lack of a better word. Then I saw this white powder on the futon, and I knew she'd gotten into the laundry detergent. I went dowstairs to find that she had indeed gotten into the soap. It looked like she'd brought some toys into the laundry room that she could stand on to reach the washer. The toys, floor and washer were covered in detergent, with a sizeable pile out on the carpet outside of the washing room. Some had gotten into the washer, on the already clean load that was in it. Then there were the little white footprints from the pile all around the family room, on the couches and the trampoline. I was just glad it was powder and not the liquid--that would've been a lot harder to clean up. I know the whole thing stemmed from her desire to help me with the laundry, but there are some kinds of help that I can do without.