'Can the World just not stay saved?!'

My favourite quote from 'The Incredibles'. As uttered by Mr Incredible himself. I like it because I understand exactly how he feels. I share his frustration when my 'was clean just a minute a go' house looks like a hurricane has just swept through - the hurricane in question being Ben and Jas. I mean, can it just not stay clean??? Err, no would be the short answer to that question. Just take a look at the evidence below:

Exhibit A

After I had managed to calm myself down suitably, I allowed the kids to help me with the ironing by collecting as many 'empty' hangers as they could. Unfortunately 'empty' got lost in translation and a good while later, they returned with arms full of hangers. Now I know we don't usually have that many spare hangers knocking around, so I knew before I even made it up to the top floor what sight would greet me. Yup. They'd gone into all the wardrobes and taken everything off the hangers.

I had to take a minute and sit down. Visions of the hours of hard work I had put in just the day before tidying up our 3-storey, 10 room house flying through my head. A full time job, a large house and two energetic, inquisitive children sometimes just gets the better of me. Nick ordered the children to bed and Ben promptly burst into tears crying, 'we were only trying to help!'

Me, I just felt drained. Guilt, guilt, guilt. A mother's nemesis. I feel guilty that I have to work so much, guilty that I am then often too tired to spend hours playing with them/reading to them. Guilty that I sometimes then have a short fuse when I have no energy left, a pile of washing the size of Everest and 3 bathrooms to clean.
Needless to say I also felt guilty because I knew they couldn't be blamed, and how else was I supposed to feel anyway with their sorry little faces looking up at me, eyes all dewy, eyelashes growing longer by the second.....? So whilst Nick tidied up the clothes, I put my little horrors to bed, read them a story, kissed the tears away and dragged myself back downstairs to tackle that ironing. They may be horrors at times, but they are cute ones. And they're my babies.

......Later in the night I went back to check on them both, as I usually do, and wondered what that blue light was, coming from the wardrobe. I opened the door and this was what I saw......


Kids! Luckily they only drive you mad half as much as they make you smile :-)