Ugh, my kids are such slobs!

This is not a secret.  Most people are full witness to this. 

How many parents are nodding their heads right now thinking yup, that sounds like mine too.

Here's my scenario...  The short one will run through the front door, kick off her shoes where she stands, drop her back pack & her coat - leaving a full trail to the bathroom, where she of course won't flush!  Then she'll strip naked in her bedroom & put on new clothes head to toe.  The school clothes will remain on the floor.  She will then tear through the house to the kitchen - ripping apart her lunch box in search of un-eaten snacks.  Papers will fall to the floor, as will crumbs.  Then she will run to the toy drawers.

AH, STOP!!  Mind you, she's only been home for 5 minutes.

Then there's my daughter.  Equally a human tornado, though not as bad.

I'm a bit of a neat freak.  I like things to be WHERE THEY BELONG.  This is definitely something that I am working on.  Stop at the front door, take off your coat, hang it in the closet.  You wouldn't think this should be such a big deal, right?  Ok, I'll give the short one the fact that she can't actually reach to hang her coat up, but make an attempt please!  It makes me crazy to see shoes in the living room & coats draped over my couch. I can deal with the back packs - because they need to do homework, but this is my living room.  Put your flippin' shoes in your room!

My son is the same way - his room was never clean.  I don't get it.  It's not that I don't teach them.

You can ask yourself a million times, why they don't get it?  Someone once told me that you need to tell a child something 40,000 times before they actually hear your voice in their head.  Holy crap!  Can I do this all in one day?  Well at least there is hope.

Now, I'm not dogging my kids here - I love them from the tip of their heads to the tip of their toes.  Especially now that one has officially left my nest, I realize how quickly it goes by.

There's a country song that says, "you're gonna miss this."  It is hard to believe, in the moment - that you will miss cleaning up that little trail of clothes & crumbs.

It may be annoying to clean up the little messes over and over again, but the fact is - I will miss the little people when they grow and leave.  Not just my own, but all that come through from chickadees to my children's friends.  They grow so quickly.

Now I look at my boy's empty, clean room & then I look at the trail of shoes and clothes & crumbs and I smile.

Thank you for reading my blog!

~Jenn