Boy; Noise with dirt on it

Every night after my kids go to bed I spend the next hour or so cleaning. I do the dishes. The laundry. Pick up the toys. Wipe hand prints off the walls. Vacuum the floor. Clean mystery matter off the couch. Then for another hour I enjoy my nice neat house. I go to bed knowing that all of my effort was wasted because the minute their feet hit the floor in the morning it will look like tiny tornadoes ripped through the house once again. I only have boys so I don’t know if it is a boy thing or just a kid thing. Although I think this is in part where the saying boys will be boys came from.

Aidan is by far my clumsiest child. He is the kid you hand a glass and before he even takes two steps he has spilled half of it. In an effort to clean up his own mess he will grab paper towels and then bend over with said glass still in hand and spill the other half. Throwing his hands up in the air in pure frustration he will attempt to walk through the mess to get more paper towel, slip in whatever it was that he didn’t get drink and ruin what he is wearing.  Every morning he insists on putting his school uniform before we go down stairs. I call it dress rehearsal because he inevitably will wear his breakfast and need to get changed again. By wear his breakfast I’m not talking a drop of milk from his cereal on his shirt. I’m talking about Special K in his hair, down his shirt, and milk all over his pants. I swear the boy has a hole in his chin. There is no other explanation.   I used to get totally annoyed with him. I know better. Annoyed doesn’t help. Now I get prepared. I only fill his glass half way. Make sure he is sitting before I hand it to him. I have paper towels on hand at all times. A spare uniform waiting on the dining room table. And plenty of patience. Or at least I try to.

Seark. Oh Seark. Unlike Aidan Seark is not clumsy. He is very purposeful is his mess making. Seark will take a bowl of goldfish, dump them on the floor and drive his toy trucks throw them. He will paint his face with yogurt. Chew carrots and spit them out all over the place. God forbid he gets his hands on a marker he will color anything but paper. An old friend came to visit me with her son who was close in age to Seark. We sat at the dining room table chatting over coffee catching up with each other while the kids were in the toy room playing. After 5 minutes of uninterrupted conversation I thought I better go check on the kids, really Seark. Never do I get a full 5 minute to do anything especially talk to an adult with no interruptions unless he is engrossed in something that is off limits. I walk in the toy room to find Seark naked on the floor covered head to toe in magic marker. The other child has become a terrified on looker standing in the corner in total shock and awe. Seark completely lost in his own artistic body painting world completely unaware of his surroundings. SEARK WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?! (I am mortified) Seark snaps out of his magic marker trance and says “what mommy? I color me bootiful”. That he did. Colored himself. He has also over the course of the last year or so colored the furniture, the walls, his brothers, and even the dog. Most days Seark is a walking multicolored disaster.

Before I had kids I don’t remember there ever being crumbs randomly strewn about the house. Tiny scraps of paper everywhere. Fingerprints on everything. EVERYTHING. I often wonder what the hell they are putting on their hands that leaves a giant smudge on everything they touch.  I used to be a perfectionist. Pillows carefully placed. Candles lit. Even books strategically placed on the coffee table. I can actually pin point not when all of that changed but when I realized it was no longer a possibility. I met a mom at a play group. We got along really well and I decided to have her over for a “play date”. While Aidan was napping I spent the morning cleaning. Perfecting. Making sure the house looked like a page out of a magazine. I thought I had vacuumed every crumb. Wiped every surface. Found and thrown out all the hidden food in the couch. Even if the kids made a mess once she was here that was fine because her initial first impression was what mattered. When she got to the house she complimented how nice everything looked. I felt accomplished. The kids were playing for not more than a few minutes when Aidan opened the door to his fake oven (that he had not played with in forever) and pulled out a pot. A fake pot with very real very moldy food. I wanted to crawl into a hole in my freshly mopped floor. Of course there was rotten food in the fake kitchen, I checked everything everywhere except for there. It was at that moment I realized my house will never be truly clean again. Moreover it is out of my hands. Despite my best efforts there will always be something lurking around that I did not see. At that time Aidan was my only child. Three boys later I realize even putting up the front is a lost cause.

There are a lot of things you have to learn to let go of. Being a perfectionist is not an option. A spotless house is one that is not being lived in. Art is permanent marker on the walls. As I write this Seark is dumping cheerios on the floor.