Yes, they’re hilarious and often times they are cute and occasionally they bake delicious cookies.

 

 

But seriously – nothing is flawless, am I right?

I mean, why – for the love of all things holy – can we not have ONE SINGLE FLAT SURFACE IN OUR HOME THAT IS NOT COVERED WITH RANDOM AND SUNDRY ITEMS?

I’m talking the stuff that comes out of kids’ pockets.  The things they “create” and then don’t know what to do with themselves.  The kite made out of construction paper  The rocks from a hike that have zero interesting things about them but if I dare to throw said plain rocks outside, someone will miss their beloved rocks and will let me know.  For the love.  Just one flat surface, people – that’s all I want.  The top of the lockers?  How about that one?  There is no reason on earth to put your novel for school on TOP of the locker when it has a perfectly reasonable home INSIDE the locker.  It’s why i bought them, for goodness sake.  Can you even imagine?  Why is this so hard?  Just open the locker.  Open it.  It doesn’t have a padlock – or even a little oh-so-tiring switch to lift up. It just pulls open.  The end.

The kitchen counter right beside the door.  It’s not just keys and pocket change.  I’m not living yet with kids who drive or have pocket change.  It’s I don’t know what – baseball cards and a wrench and why did any of my children have a wrench out anyway?  It’s one sock and a water bottle and sixteen bottle caps and I tell you what – these bottle caps are making me lose my mind.  The kids are obsessed wth them.  I gather that they represent some sort of currency – perhaps taking the place of the coal currency that was king last summer.  I don’t know.  I’m not their financial guru.  I serve in a different capacity here.  But if I see another bottle cap floating across the surface of my life, I am going to feed said bottle cap to the first child that walks past me.

Why are there children’s shoes constantly in MY bedroom?  I don’t wear size 5 smelly Keens.  And, speaking of stuff in my bedroom, I know that our bathroom has NO counter.  (As in, zero counter.  The sink is too tilted and small to even place a bottle of hand soap there.)  But does zero bathroom counter space mean that my bedroom should somehow become the collection place for all of the hairbrushes our household owns?

Don’t even get me started on the phenomenon of the one sock and one shoe that get found all over our house.  Do my kids go to social functions in one sock and one shoe?  Suddenly I’m thinking they must.  You’d tell me if that was occurring – right?

Then there’s the Legos – do they multiply under my feet but vanish when the kids want new ones?  This must be an accurate assumption.

I can’t answer all of these questions.  I can’t keep my counter surfaces clean and kid paraphernalia out of my own bedroom.  The Legos are never completely picked up and I will never understand why putting shoes away is so tricky.

There you have it – life with five kids.  It’s not tidy, that’s for certain.

 

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