Am I the Only One?

So yesterday the kids all returned to school following a nice little spring break and Cayden slept until 11:00am. I had a nice peaceful morning without really moving from my room after dropping the kids off to school. All the way home I sang loudly with Musiq to "So Beautiful". It's my new favorite song.

So finally about 1:00pm I actually started to make my way to start cleaning and straightening up a little. Well let me back up just a little. Normally my house gets a good cleaning on Sunday but this week we had visitors, things to do and the craziness of preparing to go back to school. I actually crashed out early on Sunday so I didn't do any "inspections" before I fell asleep.

Okay, catch back up to yesterday when I went through the house to discover a filthy Jack and Jill bathroom that my kids share, dirty rooms all around, towels left in the backyard from the weekend jacuzzi dips and dirty dishes that were not even started in the dishwasher.

Not only did I feel a little overwhelmed and agitated...I wanted to shake a 15 year old with force. Here is the thing. I had a mother who took it upon herself to wake us up in the middle of the night with either a belt or a clanging wooden spoon against a pot if we dare go to sleep with the kitchen dirty. Many nights I wanted to break EVERY DISH in that kitchen after being awaken at 2am to the sound of her annoying voice yelling about "I told you not to go to bed with that kitchen dirty". Thing is, take a chance if you dare to break...or even clang a dish...and you are liable to get a double beating with whatever her eyes fall on first as she hops out of her warm snuggly bed again. By whatever she sees first, I mean it could be her shoe, a belt, a broom...hell even her purse strap but you are gonna get it if you begin even sounding mad in the kitchen. This ain't child abuse baby. It's old skool 101!

Skip forward to 2009. My house. I'm not old skool and I stick to the things I said in that kitchen at 2 am. "When I have kids I'll never do this to them". Not to say my parents did a bad job because something must have stuck. I absolutely detest a filthy kitchen! In fact all the things that annoyed my mother when I was a child now peeve me as well, but I also don't work the hours she put in at the office. In my own humble opinion I think after getting up at 6:30am, a full day of school, weightlifting classes, basketball practice and usually a few hours of homework and dinner sometimes kids are just...tired. Everything doesn't get done every day. Somedays I demand less, some days more and that get to decide if they are going to continue in their ways and lose their priveledges or just get their work done.

Question for you?

Am I the only one who has a child who will trip over a case of water sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, look down at it as if to say "what was that doing there?" and then keep walking? Ummm hello, put away the groceries means the water too!

Am I the only one who constantly tells their children to rinse the toothpaste down the sink after they spit it out of their mouths into the sink? (ick!)

Am I the only one who watches children walk over the same dirty sock in their doorway until I tell them to pick it up.

Am I the only one who has to tell kids to put their shoes in their closet or by the front door and if I don't eventually tell them to take their shoes upstairs I'd have enough shoes by the front door to start my own shoe store.

Am I the only one who tells a child each week, "go upstairs and collect the cups out of everyone's room"

Am I the only one who picks up Caprisun wrappers on a weekly basis? I desperately need to find a remedy for the dreaded capri sun wrapper.


They have no idea that if I look in their room and see this?
I would never enter their room. That's the trick...at least for a while it works to keep the doorway clean. But when I walk down the stairs and see THIS from their doorway...
I'm coming in and all hell is breaking loose when he gets home from school today.