Today I vacuumed my entire house. May not sound like much to you, but for me it is a feeling similar to that of, I don’t know, reaching the submit of Everest. Ok, so maybe not that great, but at least equivalent to carrying all of your groceries inside the house in one trip, or having all of the laundry washed, folded and put away in the same day. Yeah, it was a big time feeling of elation. I would love to say that I did this because I am a good homemaker. That I did this because I have pride in our home and want it to be clean and welcoming. The real reason behind the vacuuming marathon of all three levels of the house, tile, carpet, stairs, you name it, was the white noise drowning out my children’s arguing. Once I began and realized I could no longer hear their debates and power struggles, the vacuum became my new spirit animal. All these years I have wasted trying to be the voice of reason when I could have hide behind the constant hum of this powerful machine and had a much less stressful and much cleaner house.

You see, my children have been on Fall break, for the last week. Also the reason I have not posted a blog in 11 days. Writing that makes me feel like a failure and also like a person who is shipwrecked. Hold please, I am being beckoned as I type, to help someone in the bathroom. I thought that once all of my children were in school full-time my butt wiping days would have reached an end. Sadly, I was mistaken. I asked my 5-year old why he isn’t wiping his own tiny heiney and he said, “Mom, I will wipe it when I am bigger.” I said, “Buddy, you are bigger.” He rebottled with, “No, but I’m not. See my legs, they are not tall. You are bigger so you have to wipe little people’s butts. Everyday. For the rest of your life.” I am such a lucky girl.

Speaking of potty talk, I cleaned all four of the bathrooms today too. Thank you for the applause and the gold star, you are so kind. But again, I would be lying if I said it was for the right reasons, you know because that little insufficient-at-butt-wiping person, he also has some issues with ready, aim, fire, that must be tended too on the regular. Today that was just a formality as the real draw was the fact that the bathroom doors lock. I should plan a little better next time and stash a mini wine bottle inside an empty Clorox wipes container. Hello, happy hour. Sparkling wine and sparkling sink fixtures, be still my heart.

Surprisingly, no one came to the door to rattle the handle frantically, their radar only tells them to do that when I am actually using the bathroom and forgot to use the handy locks.

Don’t get me wrong, they are driving me a bit batty, but, I do like when we are all in the house. They wrote a play about Pilgrims and Indians, complete with costumes and makeup, playbills and tickets, and preformed it for the family after dinner. They have made endless forts and doll houses out of boxes. They learned that athletes make more money than police officers and got downright angry about it, thank you to the game of LIFE for pointing out that injustice to my 11-year-old who has been on a soapbox all week. (A soapbox I would gladly stand on with her expect that she is yelling and failing her arms and would knock me off within seconds.) They visited a model train exhibit and had a dance party. They helped to set up for a breakfast ministry to feed the homeless Thanksgiving morning.  They wrote letters and drew pictures to send to their friends. They had a nice long library visit, complete with a busting bag of books, in hopes for some quiet reading time at home. They gave each other makeovers (my poor little guy), and put on a fashion show. They helped bake muffins, Quiche and cinnamon rolls. They spent hours at Lowes while decisions were made about shiplap and ceiling fans. They have had a busy week and while writing this I am thinking that the reader may be feeling that these kiddos were well entertained and it appears as if I did, in fact, have plenty of time to get my own tasks accomplished in the midst of all of their creative shenanigans.

As is true with the best illusionists, all the chaos is under wraps, leaving an appearance of magic. Several tiny brawls ensued during just about every activity listed above, all leading to an angry mob of children storming the room I was in, yelling, “MOM!” Each trying to be the first, the loudest, the most convincing at turning the others in for whatever crime they feel occurred.Thanks to their consistent disruptions my brain is fried. This morning I stuck a five dollar bill and the tiniest note you could ever write in my daughters pillow case, apologizing on behalf of the tooth fairy for being late to claim the two teeth she lost in one day, saying, it’s an extremely busy season for magical people, but we are trying! I also mixed up two online bill payments, poured my coffee into the toaster and sent my amazon order to my old address, while trying to multitask during a fight over who was better at turning on the television. So I sit here, hiding in my closet, telling myself that if I just stick to my list today I can conquer the world, or at least the tiny corner of it that we so loudly occupy. After all, any list that includes: Locate the Elf, Order Mermaid Tails and Stop forgetting to be the Tooth Fairy is definetly a list that leads to world domination.