>Last week I went to tuck Efram into bed and noticed he smelled sort of minty-strawberry. I asked him if he and Bennett had been (yet again) raiding my bathroom, mixing up my creams, and slathering up. “No,” he said. “It’s Tom’s.”

Of Maine. The toothpaste. And it started at his feet and went up to his neck.

I don’t know what got me more riled up — that I had drag him into the shower to rinse off the toothpaste he’d coated his little body with, or that he’d used up 1/2 a tube of that pricey paste doing so.

Of course, the reason we even have Tom’s of Maine toothpaste in the house is because I spared no cost with my firstborn and refused to let Bennett’s precious little teeth go near anything sugary… I considered it a badge of honor that I couldn’t find Tom’s in the regular drugstore and secretly scorned the parents I saw buying Kids Crest. Of course, now Bennett eats his own boogers, so I’m a lot less picky about what goes in his mouth. But for some reason, Efram only uses Toms. Same for Frances.

Surprise, surprise, Mr. Bennett won’t go near it now, and only wants to Crest/Colgate crap I avoided for years. But now that I’ve been awoken out of my organic toothpaste stupor, and I’m more than happy to buy it.

Flash forward to yesterday. Bennett took an especially long bath, was cleaner than he’d been in weeks, and went to brush his teeth. Five minutes pass, I stick my head in the bathroom, and see that he’s got Kids Crest all over his forehead, Toms of Maine on his eyelids, undereye, and cheeks, and (yes, a third) Strawberry Colgate on his mouth and chin.

(Ok, the only reason I even have the Colgate is because I am a compulsive toiletry tourist, and don’t feel I’ve ever seen a country until I’ve bought enough product to warrant an extra suitcase. I picked up this stuff in Canada (ignoring M’s claims that just because it had a French label, didn’t mean it was really French).. and thought it might actually bridge the Tom’s-Crest divide, and I’d finally get everyone using only one toothpaste. Wrong. Bennett won’t touch it.)

So, Bennett heads into the shower to rinse off the paste, and of course gets a healthy serving in the eye, and wouldn’t you know it, blames me for his woes.

And there you have it. Four kids. Three different kinds of toothpaste. Endless fun.