Real Life

I’m sitting in my family room with 4 crying children.  The three and five year old are crying because they just had a fight.  They now sit, in time out, on chairs on opposite sides of the room.  Unfortunately the chairs face each other, so they’re busy exchanging ugly faces with one another in order to keep it going.

The baby is crying because she is hungry, and the other baby (my 20 month old) is crying because she woke up with a cough and wants to be held and she’s mad that I’m holding the baby.

A few minutes ago I was seriously pondering running a few errands with all of them before I pick my kids up from school for the weekend.  THAT thought has been thrown out.

It’s obvious that they all could use a nap, but I can’t do that right now because in one hour I have to put them all in the car, and there are few things I like LESS than waking up children when they’re still tired and hearing them cry the rest of the day.  The naps will have to wait.

I find myself trying to remember what “noble” things I had intended to do this morning when I woke up and the day held all the promise of happy children and the chance to do some housework.  Was I going to do the dishes?


Perhaps I was going to clean up the piano books strewn all over the living room floor.


I need to remember to ask them why we need juice boxes, bowls and UNO cards with us when we practice.


Or was I going to fold some laundry?


Hey, at least it’s all clean!  That is, unless someone’s been changing clothes in there and leaving the dirty ones mixed in.  That wouldn’t be good news.

Usually my children sort their own laundry before I wash it.  Maybe I should be sorting for my #2 son, just in case there’s more of this in his dirty clothes hamper:


Yes, that would be a brand new, tags and stickers still on, shirt ON A HANGER in his dirty clothes!
Did I tell you that he is 8 years old?  Did I mention that the bar it hangs on is only inches away from the dirty clothes hamper he placed it in?   I made him watch me take the picture, telling him that I might need the picture someday as proof that this really happened!  We laughed, but I was serious.   And now I wonder what else he’s stashing in that pile.  I should probably check before it goes near my washing machine.

I remember now!  I think I was going to finish putting our basement storage room back together after discovering we’d been invaded by mice over the weekend.  That’s a detour I’m not ready to talk about yet.

Maybe I’m the one who should take a nap.  Or go look for some chocolate.
Real life.  Some days it’s definitely better than others.
My baby is one month old today.  Can I go back to the hospital?