If you’re a parent of a young child, you’re probably no stranger to waking up in the middle of the night to your child calling for “Mommy!” from his bedroom. If you’re lucky, it’s simply a bad dream, a stuffy nose or some other legitimate reason that has disturbed your sleep. If you have a preschooler like mine, however, you have a child born without the ability to discern between critical and non-critical reasons to wake you up at 5 a.m. For me, justifiable reasons to rouse a sleep-deprived mother from slumber include a preschooler’s bodily functions or, perhaps, flames.

Greetings, fresh back from spring break! You know that time of year - when your kid is bouncing off the walls from being at school so much that it’s only fair that he bounce around some walls around you again. And the thing that’s annoying about it is the timing every year - it’s always the same week that everybody else and their kids go on vacation. If you are on a “staycation,” you might notice your hometown just got a little more crowded and if you are able to travel to a hotel, you might notice the cleanliness is not quite up to snuff.

Welcome to my first blog post!  You may be asking, why would a comedian/comedy writer such as myself team up with the fine folks at The Clorox Company?  For one very simple reason – messes are funny.  Yep, you heard me!  Maybe not right when they happen but, as I’ve seen with practically everything else in life, you just gotta laugh. And being a mom to a six-year old boy and five rescue dogs, on a daily basis I sure do see my share of messes!

So I walk into Max’s bedroom the other day to see what look like a series of little bugs on the wall beside his bed. Freaking out, I leap over him to inspect the critters, when my son suddenly says nonchalantly, “Oh, those are my boogers, Mommy!” and continues to shoot lasers out of his stuffed dog’s head.

After a long winter, I’m always ready for spring! But how can I enjoy the warmer weather if I’m stuck inside searching for dust bunnies? Fortunately I’ve discovered some ways to make spring cleaning a little less painful.

Everywhere you look, people are coughing and sneezing. And if you hang out with the preschool set, you’ll see that they’re not just coughing and sneezing, they’re also rubbing their faces with the sneezed-upon items. Maybe even putting them in their mouths.

We’ve all faced those moments we just wanted to bleach away…For me, it was the time Max pooped in the tub (I swore that whole act was just an urban myth!) or when I discovered Elle’s plastic milk container had spent the entire holiday break in the school’s Lost & Found.

Last week I wrote about random acts of kindness: mommy-style. That is, those spontaneous moments with your children that convince you that even though you don’t think your kid has eaten a vegetable in over a week, you may still be doing ok with this “parenting” thing.

The greatest moments of parenthood are those times where your kid will do something so spontaneously kind or wonderful that it makes those 9 months of pregnancy almost worth all those incessant trips to the bathroom.

Whether it’s an unprompted, “I love you, Mommy” or a burst of good manners when you were convinced your kid was spawned from the devil, those random acts of kindness--even if unbeknowst to the kid--are irreplaceable.

Mitch Chaitin, author of Gay NYC Dad, is a Stay-At-Home Dad who blogs about parenting, adoption, giveaways, product reviews and the celebrities he meets in New York City. He and his spouse of twenty years adopted a son who is now in the 4^th grade at the NYC Public Schools system.

Everyone gets a little sad when the holidays are over. I know that come January 2, despite my hesitation, it is time to start cleaning up the house.