Have you ever vacuumed with the vacuum bag ripped? Or use the shop vac with it somehow spewing dust and other matter out of the back? (Both have actually happened to me.) If not, imagine, slowly pushing the vacuum forward while your busy toddler quietly follows you and throws flower, spices, toys and whatever else he or she may have up their sleeve or behind their back all over the floor behind you. This is what it is like cleaning with toddlers. Sometimes you wonder why you bother cleaning at all, but I have figured out a very sensible reason for this seemingly not so sensible action..... Because you don't want a mess on top of a mess. Picturing this is giving me chest pains....
As we all know, life can become quite stressful and intense. Ever since my early teenage years, one of the ways I learned to cope with being able to handle the curve-balls that would come my way, was to try to make sure that at least my physical surroundings were orderly and neat. Life might sometimes seem like a mess, but at least it was an organized mess!
I remember one evening, when I was going through the dating scene, I had retreated after a rather long day, into my bedroom. As I was tidying up my already Martha Stewart picture perfect, slightly OCD room, my mother poked her head into my room to wish me a good night, but stopped suddenly as she slowly drew in the scene before her. I was on my hands and knees, combing the fringes of my carpet out with my fingers, so that none of the fringes were touching, and all of them were relatively straight.
My mother looked at me, let out a soft gasp and said, "Tana! You can't expect to do that when you have children!"
Still a teenager at 19, I responded, "I know! And I am not going to have fringes on my carpet when I have kids!!!!"
It took me 1.2 seconds to figure that out.
It took me 1.2 seconds to figure that out.
It wasn't exactly something I regularly thought about, but I wanted to take advantage of the time of neatness while I could. Little did I know just how messy busy toddlers and kids with special needs can make your world, but in the meantime I continued to live in a world of bliss (or was it slight oblivion). I would fix those fringes on the carpet, hang my clothing in height order and according to weekday and special occasion, made sure to dust and kept the books in height order..... yes, [sigh] there was more but I will stop here.... but that was one of the ways I felt in control of that time period in my life, a time that was full of introspection, nervousness and, well, at that point I was still working on my sense of humor......
So does our house get messy? Yes! Does it feel like I might lose my mind? Well, only when the mess looks like it is something out of Calvin and Hobbes, slowly morphing and coming to devour me alive. I remember seeing those scenes in Calvin and Hobbs and thinking, wow, that child (and author), has an incredible imagination!..... well now I am not so sure it's an imagination. ... and no one ever told me that laundry can multiply faster than fruit flies. And how on earth is there so much laundry when it seems like half the kids (especially my sensory kids), prefer to be in the nude??
But is it all worth it? At the end of the day, when I have cleaned up, rearranged, wiped, sprayed and organized for the trillionth time (literally), is it all worth it? I will give you a resounding Yes! And I thank G-d for a beautiful and colorful mess full of colorful and suspiciously sticky fingers and little bodies and the list goes on. In my teenage years, if G-d would have shown me a glimpse of our future mess, I probably would have fainted on the spot. Am I brave enough to show you pictures of our beautifully messy house with the kids in action before mommy digs real deep for that last little bit of mental energy to clean up again? Uh, nooooo. Anyway, the pictures of our toddler and one year old covered in chickpea flour this evening (thanks to our toddler who was filling an awesome sensory need), she was not exactly dressed appropriately, if you can even call it that, so I will leave that up to your imagination.
May we all be blessed with an unlimited amount of energy and a rock solid sense of humor to gracefully make it through the toddler days and beyond.
But is it all worth it? At the end of the day, when I have cleaned up, rearranged, wiped, sprayed and organized for the trillionth time (literally), is it all worth it? I will give you a resounding Yes! And I thank G-d for a beautiful and colorful mess full of colorful and suspiciously sticky fingers and little bodies and the list goes on. In my teenage years, if G-d would have shown me a glimpse of our future mess, I probably would have fainted on the spot. Am I brave enough to show you pictures of our beautifully messy house with the kids in action before mommy digs real deep for that last little bit of mental energy to clean up again? Uh, nooooo. Anyway, the pictures of our toddler and one year old covered in chickpea flour this evening (thanks to our toddler who was filling an awesome sensory need), she was not exactly dressed appropriately, if you can even call it that, so I will leave that up to your imagination.
May we all be blessed with an unlimited amount of energy and a rock solid sense of humor to gracefully make it through the toddler days and beyond.
Our son with Autism actually got past the child lock to this spice cabinet a while back. He dumped the cayenne pepper down the air conditioning vent just as the A.C. kicked in..... it was painful. This little beauty has thankfully not discovered the A.C. vent. Yet. And mommy has learned her lesson.
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