Mess

Being a mom is seriously not for the weak!! Sometimes I like to describe it as being on a treadmill all day.  It's like you're running and running, but some days you never actually get anywhere.  I notice this the most with house cleaning.  I like to have things put away where they go in the house, but in order to accomplish this, I must literally clean all. day. long.  No breaks.  Because one little break and it will all fall back to shambles!  This can be really exhausting and especially frustrating when you have a day where you just want to take it easy.  Like last Friday.  I was just feeling SO tired so I decided I wasn't going to stress over the house.  I had a great day, but it's now Tuesday and I am finally 90% caught back up from the mess my children made on that one day.  Any other moms feel my pain????  My kids are actually pretty darn good kids.  They don't even make that big of a mess and it is still really bad.

The only thing I have found to help is a corny little cleaning schedule I found online that gives you daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning tasks.  It doesn't help with the preschooler induced mess everywhere, but it has helped me to accomplish some "deep cleaning" in the midst of the normal-cleanup-treadmill-run.

But anyways....now that I've had my moment to pout and vent.  I was really going somewhere else with this post! In the evenings now that my kids are getting older, I typically put them in the tub at night to play get clean and while they are in there, I pick up around the upstairs.  Multi tasking at it's finest.  It's one of the luxuries I can enjoy now that they don't need constant supervision in the tub.  The bathroom is upstairs so I can hear them while I clean up the miscellaneous toys and such strung around.  The other night while I was doing this I had to run down stairs and grab my camera because I had one of those sweet mommy moments.  I think God gives us these as a way of saying "I know it's hard, but look closer and enjoy the sweet, simple, things that only a Mama can enjoy." And so I did.

See, as a whole, the little things here and there around the room just look like a mess.

 But as I started picking them up to put them away, I saw the signs of my creative, imaginative kiddos.

That love to make believe.

 All of the mess, just signs of an innocent day well spent.

 Playing and laughing in an imaginary world.

 and I suddenly wasn't so tired of picking up their toys.  

Refreshed enough to finish the bath. Put them to bed. And pray for another day spent with them.  

Picking up their toys.