The three of us (kids & me) were getting dressed this morning after breakfast and I realized that some of their clothes in the nursery needed to be hung in their closet. As I began to put the full hangers away I heard giggling from my room and wandered in to find my little girl wearing one of my tennis shirts (I had taken the box of tennis clothes out to find something suitable to wear earlier that morning). Of course, it was gigantic on her and she was prancing around in it like it was a prom dress. After a short course of dancing with them I went to put away the top and realized that I really don't wear it any more. As I glanced through the box I saw a couple other items that either didn't fit quite right or were never really very comfortable. So I took them out of the box...fast forward to an hour later and I had covered the floor of our bedroom with clothes that I had been hanging onto for years thinking "one day I might wear this again". Quite pleased with myself, I headed down to the laundry room to get a large garbage bag to put the clothes in.
Fast forward to an hour later and the kids had helped me do two loads of laundry and rearrange the entire cabinet that the garbage bags were sitting in and vacuum sealed a bunch of blankets in the cupboard to prevent moth and mold damage. On the floor of the laundry room were a few random items that really belonged in the garage but had somehow made their way into the laundry room cupboard. Yep, you guessed it, fast forward another hour and a half and the garage was cleaned as well. Unfortunately the ATV was sitting outside the garage staring at me. I had no choice but to drive it to it's rightful home...the shed....luckily for me, I had just been out to the shed the previous day when the kids wanted their turtle pool set up so there was minimal cleaning to be done. So here we were, all three exhausted and hungry for lunch, me hauling the last of the two loads of laundry upstairs with the aforementioned garbage bags on top and I realized it had taken me four hours and I never did get all of the clothes in the nursery hung up.
It is no wonder that when my hubby asks me what I did each day when he comes home that I usually draw a complete blank....it's usually nothing I planned to do and yet somehow takes up all of my time.
We were visiting Nana and Grandpa the other day and as we drove up to their driveway I saw that they had put out the trash. Not that this is an unusual occurrence, but on this particular day they had included FIVE big cardboard boxes to be recycled. As most moms know, a good cardboard box is equal to about 10-20 minutes of occupied kid time. After some quick math in my head I was all aflutter with the idea that I could make the kids a fort out of the boxes and if there were five of them then that may add up to almost an hour of play for the little ones. Nana was happy to sacrifice the boxes to the mother's sanity fund and the very next day my kids spent not one but TWO hours puttering around their newly found fortress. The best part is that it cost me all of about 30 cents in masking tape. I made a maze with some windows and a hole to pop your head up out which both kids enjoyed. Ah - sweet harmony - it's enough to put smiles on everyone's faces, if only for a little while...
