Reality

Billy has been saying I need to put more reality into the blog. Not that what I put is fake or made up. It's not. But I'll admit it, I don't usually include the stories where I'm so frustrated with my kids that I want to scream; when my house is an absolute pigsty I'm afraid for anyone who might come to the door; when I wonder why I thought having three kids was a good idea. I mean, really who wants to read that? And do I really want to remember it?!

This morning I woke up to a messy house. Not horrible, but we had a friend over for dinner Sunday night and didn't do our usual pick up when the kids went to bed. I immediately started a load of laundry and got to work on dishes and the floor and everything dirty that seemed to be staring me in the face.

Jacob woke up on the wrong side of the bed and everything made him whine or fuss or just cry. And I'm talking super silly things in my opinion. No milk in his cup at breakfast - cry. (Did he ever think to ask for some?!) My asking him to shut the bathroom door before Matthew crawls in - cry. My asking him to pick up a couple toys he played with during the night instead of sleeping - cry, fuss, whine. I was trying my hardest to be patient, but the longer it went on, the more difficult that became.

Around 8:45 am I knelt down to pick up our fridge's magnet letters that ALWAYS end up on the floor as opposed to the fridge, and I saw a couple ants crawling along. I quickly got them and suddenly realized there was dirt/crumbs on the floor in my pantry. How had I missed that?! As I start to move a couple things to get it cleaned up, I was face to face with a container of dextrose Billy bought a while ago, but never really used (another story for another day), and the dextrose had weevils. Then I looked at the dextrin he had also bought and barely used; more weevils. Then I looked at the flour sitting next to it, thinking, "I didn't see anything last night when I used it, but I'll look anyway." and what do you know, more weevils! Then I looked at the floor again. The little specks of dirt were dead weevils!

It's now noon. I spent the morning pulling everything out; even the cans (because there were some weevils crawling on the outside of them) and wiping the whole pantry down. Jacob could sense my distraction, and that coupled with his not sleeping well last night, made for a not so fun combo of time outs and (I'll admit it) threats to clean up his mess or I'd throw his stuff away. Matthew has been mostly ignored too, because I wanted these little buggars gone, so he's extra fussy.

It isn't all doom and gloom though. The weevil attack of 2007 (yes, there was one) was even worse. I bought lots of "air tight" containers after that, and while not all of them worked, some did, so it was an improvement. I still have to replace a lot though: flour, sugar, corn starch, corn meal, dried milk, rice, bisquick - and all of these were in "air tight" containers. :) Oh well. At least I didn't loose the cake and brownie mixes and crackers like last time. I moved those after the 2007 clean up. I guess I'm learning.

Did my kitchen floor get cleaned? No. Did I vacuum? No. Did I clean the bathrooms? No. Did we go to park group? No. (But I wasn't sure if we would or not just because it was so far away today.) The laundry is clean, but just sitting in a big heap on the couch. The boys are going down for quiet time and I want to too. I guess I'll see what happens.