I'm not sure if the highlight of my day would be the non-parental-sanctioned food fight with cornbread crumbs for ammunition, resulting in all my clean laundry being sprinkled... uh, peppered?... no, inundated with crumbs (if one can inundate with crumbs-- if you saw my laundry, I'm pretty sure you'd agree it's possible), or if that title goes to walking into the kitchen from cleaning up a mess in the bathroom (which has been a frequent occurrence with multiple children dealing with the revenge of someone named Montezuma for the last couple days-- and knowing them, someone seeking revenge on them seems perfectly reasonable, though it doesn't make me a fan of having to clean it all up) only to find a clothes hanger standing straight up in my pancake batter. As I walked over to remove the hanger, it fell over and sent batter flying, spattering all over everything, myself included. The morning had gone such that the only thing I could think to mutter out loud when this special chain of events finished was, "Of course. Of course that just happened."
On Wednesday morning, a little after 1 AM, we returned home from a trip for which I had packed up the majority of our apartment, and for sure the entirety of my kitchen. Obviously with three small, sick children and all the sleep deprivation that goes along with them, very little had been unpacked as of Thursday morning. That means 5 people's clothes and shoes of all sorts in various baskets, bags, and containers, an espresso maker, a stand mixer, 6 different kinds of flour, leftover peanut and almond butters, 10 boxes of assorted teas, three onions and two heads of garlic, small kitchen gadgets galore, any other random thing you can think of-- and at least 7 more that you can't, were all sitting in my living room, spread in a fabulously messy and disorganized way as only we can spread them. It was amazing. And then my children dug through every box and basket they could reach, climbed over things to boxes and baskets they couldn't reach, absolutely positive they had a completely valid reason for doing so. (They didn't. I promise.)
I can't handle that kind of mess and visual chaos. I really, really can't. It makes my brain turn off and then I just run around doing one random thing, then another, then another, all of them completely unrelated and unhelpful to each other, and not actually accomplishing anything. It's a problem. So I decided to zero-in on the clothes. In my semi-crazed state, it seemed reasonable enough. "Just put the clothes away in the drawers and closet, and then half the mess will be gone." Simple. Except it's five people's clothes-- dress and casual, and three of those people are small and deeply inclined to spill upon and otherwise render their outfits unwearable and require multiple wardrobe changes daily. It was a LOT of clothes. When packing to come home, I had tried to sort the clothes into baskets by person, but when the last couple batches of laundry were finished right before we left, clean clothes were shoved into any available basket within reach no matter whose basket or clothes were involved. Because I lean towards obsessive compulsive tendencies (and by lean, I mean neatly and in an orderly fashion fall flat on my face smack in the middle of the category of obsessive compulsive), I had to remove every single item of clothing from every single basket, bag, and container, and sort it all by person, item-of-clothing-type, sleeve length, pant type, dress or play sock, and then carefully put it all away in just the right place in everyone's drawers so as not to upset anyone too much by placing their favorite shirt more than three shirts down from the top of the pile. Hopefully Seth will grow out of that need one day.
Seriously though, it took a little while.
My children, ever the helpful ones, were more than happy to keep the baby company and occupied while I was semi-lost in my blissful state of ridiculous pre-putting-away organization. Finn crawls all over the place now, so while he started out in the bedroom next to the dressers with me, he quickly made his way to the not often explored hallway, just because he could. He loves it there, since he doesn't get all the way to the hallway frequently, and it makes a really great sound when he slaps the hard floor and squeals repeatedly since there are no rugs or anything else to absorb the sound. I'm sure the neighbors love it too.
That was fine... I could hear him, and Lila told me she was going to get him a toy or two to play with there. How sweet, I thought.
The first time I went into the hall to check on things, there were three toys sitting around the baby. The next time, maybe two minutes later, the number of toys around him had tripled. I went out to check on him again and noticed the toys had multiplied and spread yet further. The fourth time I peeked out the doorway of the bedroom, I spotted Lila coming around the corner with an armload of baby toys, happily bouncing on her tiptoes, pleased with herself for taking such great care of her baby brother, I'm sure. She dumped them at his feet and turned around to head back to the living room. I figured all the baby toys were in the hallway now, so that would be the end of that. The next thing I knew, there was a loud roaring of cheap plastic wheels accompanied by the shrill squeals of pure joy and thrill coming around the corner. The box that normally houses all the baby toys was now full of mostly naked, ornery two year old, unbrushed bedhead and all, being wildly and far too quickly pushed by an equally crazed four year old. Why they thought coming flying around the corner towards a narrow hallway littered with baby toys AND the baby they belong to is beyond me, but that's what happened. We wont talk about what happened next.
Everyone is fine, but the stuffed monkey rattle will probably never be the same.
I finally got all the clean clothes put away, except for the really cornbread-y stuff, which needed to be shaken out outside first, and went back to the living room/dining room to see what else needed to be taken care of. The shocking amount of dirty laundry was obviously next. The kids had collected and tossed it all into a giant pile in the middle of the living room and were jumping off of it in their unceasing effort to be helpful and drive me to insanity all at the same time. I managed to shift their focus from jumping off of, to the sorting of the laundry, and soon had four very nice, neatly sorted piles of clothes in the kitchen (because that's where dirty laundry goes, right? It does if you only have a portable washer that hooks up to the kitchen sink!).
And then Aidan was hungry. Starving, actually. He decided that a placo was the thing for him. (You know, a placo--what you make when you have all the insides of a taco, but not the tortilla to put it in, so it just goes on a plate. PLate tACO. All together now,"ooOOOoo I get it!" You want one now, don't you?) I was in the middle of nursing my other starving child, so I couldn't hop up and make Aidan his placo right that second. He decided to wrap the container of taco meat he'd pulled out of the fridge in a special blanket he'd found, and carry it around like the special food baby that it was while he waited. I'll admit it, I finished nursing the baby and got distracted doing something else, and Aidan kept on carrying around that taco meat, patiently waiting to unwrap it for me to heat up for him.
After a few minutes, I remembered I still needed to make him his placo. He took the meat to the kitchen, ready to put it up on the counter so I could put it in a pan and warm it up for him, except that when he went to unwrap it from it's special food baby blanket, it slipped and fell... and glass and ground beef went flying all over the kitchen and into my four neat, sorted piles of laundry. I immediately found myself wishing for more cornbread in my clean laundry instead of ground beef and glass in my dirty laundry. Talk about perspective.
It was at that point that I called my super awesome husband and asked if we could just get pizza for dinner because I was officially quitting Thursday. Unfortunately, once he got home, we realized there aren't any pizza places around here that we like anymore and I was back on the hook for dinner. And then the baby sneezed a line of snot from the height of my shoulder down to the floor. To be honest, at that point, I wasn't even upset... I was kind of impressed.
About motherhood, my Mother-in-law always says, tongue-in-cheek, "It's a glamorous business."
Today was one of the more glamorous yet. Even so, it comes to an end with me still feeling completely thankful for the opportunity to live it and be involved in every moment of it, because I know that tomorrow they'll be one day further away from being my little babies, and one day closer to grown up and on their own. When those grown up days come, I know some little part of me will miss days like today, but I hope more of me is content and thankful that I lived, loved, and raised my children intentionally and didn't miss any of the good stuff... because really, this is the good stuff. Getting through the rough days and being thankful for them and wanting more of all of it-- the good, the bad, and the snotty, because I know it teaches all of us as parents more than we realize right this minute when we're in the middle of it. We have the opportunity to practice love, patience, mercy, understanding, and compassion with each broken jar of taco meat, each mangled monkey rattle, and be reminded of what is really important when it feels like everything is going wrong. I'd rather be cleaning up broken jars and putting away crazy amounts of laundry in a house full of happy toddler chaos than have a perfectly neat and orderly-- but quiet and empty house.
I guess today was that genuine kind of special after all.
