I was not smart enough to study forensic science.  My attempt to further my education beyond my degree in criminal justice pretty well ended when I had to take chemistry.  I aced microbiology, but chemistry left me feeling like Forrest Gump at NASA.

I still get to pretend around the house though.  As a mother of small boys, I find crime scenes on a pretty regular basis.

Hmmm.  I see sucker wrappers and sticks all over the basement floor.  The boys let me sleep until 8:30 on a Saturday morning. The survey says?  Dum Dums for breakfast!

The Breathalyzer is also a useful tool.  Anyone caught with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on their breath from my secret stash?  They don’t even get a trial by a jury of their peers.

Some days you do more investigating than usual.

When the funky smell in the kitchen did not improve after taking out the trash and the compost, I began to get a tiny bit nervous.  Thankfully I remembered the diaper pail.  Otherwise all you can do is pace and sniff and pray you don’t have to wait for the smell to get worse for you to be able to find the source.

Knowing your criminals can help.  If I find grossness on the toilet seat, but the toilet has been flushed and the sink is full of suds?  It wasn’t Tater.  However, if the toilet remains unflushed, and there are no suds, Tater is probably guilty.  Linus uses way too much hand soap, but at least he flushes!

Much like the time “someone” drew a tic tac toe board on the wall upstairs.

I have even found myself analyzing the spray pattern of Lego mishaps.  If small Legos have spread out six feet from where a child is standing and holding his eye?  You can be sure it wasn’t an “accident.”

Finally, there was the diaper change.  JD has been going above and beyond the call of duty in that department.  By the third round of being a “productive citizen”, I spotted something unusual.  Not “oh, he had watermelon yesterday” kind of unusual.  I mean break out the rubber gloves unusual.

I still have no idea what he ate, but it was a small, black plastic thing that looks suspiciously like it may have come from a DVD case.  I was unable to find a case missing a piece though.

But tomorrow is another day.  I may figure out what he got into, besides my husband’s chocolate milk mix.  Surely there will be new crimes to solve!