Messes

  As a mom, you need to get used to messes. I think I spend half my waking hours cleaning up messes. These are usually fresh newly created messes left to me by my mischievous boys. I've found pancakes in the washer, juice in the carpet, crayon on the walls, peanut butter on the stairs, and many other things that non-parents would probably never have to clean.
  I am not the neatest person or best housekeeper but these boys can DESTROY things. Now that my baby has become a climbing toddler, nothing is safe. The thing is we have too much clutter so it's easy for him to pull a bunch of things off of the shelves, dump a basket of toys and tip over a chair in seconds flat. It takes me many many more seconds to clean it up. I'm trying to teach my three year old and the four year old I babysit to clean up after themselves. My one year old will often follow the lead and pick up toys with them. It's cute.
  I can seriously clean my entire living room before leaving for work at night and by noon the next day, it appears as if it hasn't been cleaned in a week. I know my boys have too much toys and I periodically go through and get rid of toys but the mountain keeps growing. I was at least able to get rid of the baby toys recently. As most kids, mine would rather play with mommy and daddy's "toys" than their own. They get tired of them I guess. I need a toy rental place where I can trade toys my kids get tired of with new ones. Like a Toybrary. This way I don't have all these toys, but just enough to entertain the boys and then I can return them and get different toys. Genius! Why haven't I thought of this before. There would have to be sterilization of some sort of course. That would be awesome. Maybe I'll do that one day.
  Well, I really should go clean up six or seven messes. The little boy I babysit just left and I have my work cut out for me. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.