MOM-ents: The Laundry List

My house is far from immaculate.  However, I DO have a “hide everything immediately” system that can get my house in working order (or as I call it “condemned” to “comfortable”) in less than ten minutes if people happen to drop by.  As long as they don’t open any cupboards or closets or ask to see the upstairs, people might even think we have it together (as long as they don’t know us very well, but then, why would they be stopping by?).

We aren’t even close to having it together.  I confided to my girlfriend the other day that I was so behind on laundry that the only clean underwear I could find for myself were bedazzled and said “just married.”  As you can imagine, they fit way better 4 years and 20 lbs. ago but they served their purpose and got me back into laundry mode.

I seriously don’t know how other moms do it.  Sunday morning I was up at 8:00 and on my feet cleaning for 3 hours and all I had to show for it was a semi-sparkly kitchen, a batch of homemade applesauce (thanks to Patch blogger ) and a pile of junk that needed to be moved upstairs with the other piles of junk, to be sorted through at a later date (never).

When I am home with my kids, I want to be home and enjoying my kids.  In fact, if I get out of work later than usual I am almost in panic-attack mode as I rush home to get back to them.  And by enjoying my kids, I mean sitting on the couch with them while they each take turns playing with my hair and telling me how much they love me.  (Sarcasm.  Mostly)

I don’t mind reading books, but I dread when Ryann wants to do something more constructive like play with Play-doh (the mess!) or even color (which means I spend 11 seconds coloring and the rest of the time chasing Matthew around while he tries to eat every (non-toxic) crayon and marker that we have, which is about 15,000.  Not that I don’t enjoy doing these things, because I do.  There is something very calming about being able to do the things with my kids that I enjoyed as a kid.

I imagine it gets a little bit easier.  With age, Matthew will begin to understand simple directions (for as many times as I have told him no, he should be understanding it, but instead he just smacks his own hand to save me the trouble and goes back to doing whatever he was doing).  He will understand that “pretending” to eat a Play-doh sandwich  and actually eating it are different things.  Ryann will get better at picking up after herself (hopefully) and down time with the kids will be more enjoyable.  Right? 

I may even be able to leave them unattended for a minute so I can go and throw a load of laundry in.  I will be looking forward to it-until the next kid comes along.