Playing Catch-up

We've just returned from a few days visiting family and friends and I feel like I've returned to the scene of a disaster. Somehow, while I was gone, a hurricane hit our family room. I really don't remember it being like this when we left. I know Carter had an accident, spilled some juice, broke into the Costco case of Granola Bites. I remember Brody's last diaper filling the diaper pail to its limit. I remember trying to finish the laundry so my husband and I would have at least some of the very limited amount of clothing we have clean and ready to wear for our trip. These things are a vague memory to me, but what I came home to is a completely different environment than that which I left.

The laundry somehow exploded all over the couch. There are at least twenty sleep-and-plays in various shades of blue all over the sectional. Tiny socks are scattered everywhere like shrapnel. There's a pumpkin kitchen towel on one of the arms, a size 3T pair of cords on the other, and one of my favorite long-sleeved T's on the floor, not to mention a trail of dryer sheets leading from the laundry room to the family room. I swore my husband took out the trash before we left, but there's a Nutri-grain wrapper on the coffee table, next to a sticky bowl of melted ice cream. Upstairs the bed is in disarray, with a down comforter and a tiger costume (?) on the floor and coffee cups littering the nightstand.

Do we really live like this? Sometimes it's a shock to come back to my own home. I used to be a neatnik, too neurotic for my own good, yes, but God, things were shiny. Do I really live in a house where every counter top is covered in crumbs? And it's not like I don't clean. Some days I think it's all I do. But there is a three-foot-tall boy who likes to follow immediately behind me and undo all of my hard work. Not to mention a six-foot-tall boy who seems to do the same.

Having two kids has been a great antidote for perfectionism. But who needs clean when I have two rosy, chubby-cheeked munchkins smiling at me all day. And there's not much I can do until they hit grow up and leave the house. They are boys after all...