the good

this past week was adeline's first spring break. i had a moment last thursday when we sent her off to school--she's going to have a spring break party in class & then WHAM! spring break sets in.  i was a bit nervous that she would give in to peer pressure & become a spring break child monster but that didn't happen. it was a good, full week filled with a day at innis woods with our neighbors, hosting the easter dinner, a day off for wes (which included a day at the park & ice cream!), a very wet day at the zoo yesterday (we need to get some of the pics & videos from that...the male lion was roaring like crazy, the lion cubs were adorable & lazy, a gorilla kept vomiting into its hand then eating the vomit, the 6 year old elephant drug a HUGE tree limb 40 yards, & the 1 year old elephant kicked & played with a huge bouncy ball & & &), then fill in the other days with cleaning & other park visits, playdates, etc. 

BUT, most importantly & stupendously: our asparagus is back! as of wednesday we had 9 or so shoots & one was even a good 6 inches tall! i screamed when i saw the lovely, pencil-thin asparagus spear. griswold ran over ready to pounce on an animal. wes ran over ready to kill a snake. adeline & amelia looked at me with indifference (i am not that dramatic that me screaming like crazy would not illicit a response from them. i am a goner if anything happens & they're the only ones here: why is mommy screaming? oh who knows, lets keep playing...)

***

daily i go through this inner conflict: how kid-lived-in/destroyed do i want my house & things to become? we have held off on some home repairs mostly b/c it'd be nearly irresponsible of us to pay a thousand bucks for new carpet just to have juice spilled on it the next day. but with smaller things like our couch (okay, still a thousand bucks maybe, hmmm) or maybe even a computer screen or even their toys...i've come up with a few ground rules (like always put toys away at night, at the least put all the toys in the room they belong or put away the last toy before getting out another, etc). 

what this struggle seems to point out is that it's hard to have kids. duh! but hard in other way besides exhaustion & always having a stupid kid song in your head--our home always looked trampled on. sure, i can clean it & it will look great for that hour or maybe four hours, if i'm super lucky & on my parenting game. but then this happens:

 & then she just moves from diving from furniture to furniture to eating & drinking & spilling said food & drink everywhere & then breaking all other rules as well. then adeline comes in & builds a couch cushion & blanket tower & all hope is lost.

i try my best to not give in to comparing us to others...but it's so difficult when things smell like poo & then i don't know what i just stepped in or don't know how our play room can go from tidy to tornado during the time it takes for me to shower... a part of me wants to just put all our adult stuff in the basement & keep the door bolted then another part of me wants to put all the kid stuff (& kids!) in the basement with the door double bolted & then another part of me feels pretty good about this combination of cheaper than usual furniture, worn out house parts mixed with a few sturdy things (okay, just our table, but it's so big it could count as two). with this combination i don't feel that hard twinge so often anymore when i see marker on the carpet or walls & see griswold licking his butt while *illegally* sitting on the couch. oh my.

really, i think my house is just littered with kid trash & muddy shoes & sticky substances & i just feel happily worn from it all. b/c if we didn't let our girls be adventurous in our house we would have no idea that amelia can dive like an olympian & adeline loves to see how the opening & closing of blinds changes her crayon color pattern. i think it's something like saying 'to hell with it' & letting the house be overtaken by the screaming banshees who are now peacefully sleeping...

the two girls with their daddy

in the end, does it really matter if our couch cushions are fluffy & smell like roses? i need to keep reminding myself that.