There’s an acorn banging around in the dryer. Of course there is. That makes perfect sense.

It goes along with the rest of it: the gobs and gobs of “art” stuck with magnets to the fridge, the Lego guy in my shoe, the missing checks and stamps that someone (and I know who!) used to play mailman.

It’s a package deal, of course. Yes, I will have the beautiful children with a side of chaos, thank you very much. What? Supersize? Yeah, sure, why not?

We know the impact a family full of kids can have on a home: stains on the couch, smudges everywhere, unflushed toilets. But what about the effect on parents? What does all of this chaos do to us?

I once posted about how having kids had changed my reading material, and the graph below makes me laugh because it’s so true.

 

But does parenting really whittle away at your intellect? Or does it just feel like it sometimes?

Yes, you lost your car keys and later found them in the fridge. But didn’t you also maybe cook dinner, soothe a sad child, help with homework, read a story and do all the voices, organize the bill folder, put in a full day’s work, restock the toilet paper, read a speck of news, and entertain a thousand worries buzzing around your head? All this while being barraged by “Watch this, watch me!” “I’m hungry,” “Did you remember the toilet paper?” “She hit me!” “I did not!”

I am sure you did. This grown up thing is much harder than it looked like from the other side. It’s no wonder your keys end up in the fridge once in a while.

Take the Cat in the Hat:

“I can hold up the cup and the milk and the cake! I can hold up these books! And the fish on a rake! I can hold the toy ship, and a little toy man! And look! With my tail I can hold a red fan! I can fan with the fan as I hop on the ball!  But that is not all. Oh, no. That is not all…”

And yes, I know, he fell. But it was pretty impressive. It takes great ability to stand on a ball like that, fanning that fan with a fish on a rake. Not everyone can do it.

And, yes, maybe you have fallen behind on the news, maybe your library books are going back late and unread, maybe your keys are in the fridge, but maybe you are also developing the work skills of a CEO, juggling 12 things at once. Maybe you are figuring things out all day, and under difficult circumstances, and eventually you will find yourself an expert with a fish on a rake. And that’s got to count for something, right?

So go ahead, acorn, bang away. I’ll be over here writing my blog post, making my grocery list, dressing this doll, singing Gangnam Style with my five year old, and getting better at it all the time.

P.S. A friend of mine, a mother of three, reports that an IPhone in an Otter Box case can survive the sanitize cycle in a dishwasher and that the “find my phone” beacon can be heard through the rinse cycle. See how smart she is getting? She never would have learned about that if she didn’t have kids!