This too could happen to you when you have more children than hands. You could realize that. although you need to drag your still sleeping children out of bed at 7:30 on school days, they pop out of bed at 5:45 on weekends. You could also realize that you are all too happy to sacrifice your values of 'not too much TV' to get 'just a little more sleep' as you allow that box in the corner to babysit your children in the morning. While you are
sacrificing your values catching up on sleep, you may also realize that your children have decided to be helpful and make their own breakfast. In so doing, there is now milk and cereal all over the floor, counters, and couches. But still, it was worth the extra ten minutes of sleep. When you wake up, your four year old may ask to paint. Of course you want to encourage this artistic experimentation, so you set her up with paints and brushes. Now you also notice that the paint cabinet is full of (now blue) barbie doll clothing, so you go ahead and clean that up. While you are cleaning, the one year old decides that she too would like to paint. (Thankfully the seven year old is downstairs
erasing brain cells in front of the ninja turtles watching educational programming on TV, and doesn't get involved in the painting). As you come back from cleaning up the barbies, you will notice that your one year old is now covered in every color paint there is. So, you take her and bring her to the shower, where your husband is showering. She gleefully joins him in the shower. So, you return back to cleaning up barbie, and overseeing the painting. You notice a few red and blue footprints into the bathroom, so you clean those up (along with the offending feet). After a few hours of painting, she's finally done, and she goes ahead to clean up. You, in the meantime, have gone downstairs to fix more breakfast (and clean the first breakfast up) and left the painting oversight to your husband.
As you go up to put the kids to bed, you notice that the bathroom looks like a art festival crime scene, with paint all over the vanity, doors, walls, and floor. You ask your husband about this and he says, "Yeah, I thought I noticed that earlier". You tell your four year old to clean it up, and notice she's enjoying it. You certainly don't want that, so you tell her to just go to bed. You also tell her she can't paint for two weeks. As she asks you what that means, you wish you had said two years. After you tuck everyone in you get the laundry, which looks like this:
Yes, that is a mountain of socks. In fact, that is a mountain of unmatched socks. This is how I spend evenings now, matching socks.
This, boys and girls, is what can happen when you have more children than hands.
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Is that not the best thing ever? Your socks go in together, come out together, and can even be put away together! Entire evenings have just opened up for me. *sigh*.
