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Hot Mess

 I try not to be a hot mess of a mom.  At least not in public.  Some people wear it like a badge, and some fake it until they make it, or at least until they are back in the car.  I try to be in the latter camp, but if ever there was a day...

I started out my day by completely melting the handle off of our BBQ chimney.  Probably not something you want to do ever, much less during fire season.  

Next, I embarrassed myself as only I can do...twice.  

After lunch I watched one of our boys meltdown over a sucker that didn't even belong to him.  It was such an incredible fit that I finally picked him up and deposited him in his bed for an impromptu nap.  

Only one baby girl would nap today.

Only one baby girl would go down at bedtime.  

In addition, the piles all over our house, and porch, and deck, and garage are threatening to take over...and it scares me that they might actually succeed.  

In the midst of all this, I did what anyone does and scrolled through Facebook.  That is, by the way, a bad idea most of the time, but a really terrible idea when you are already feeling like a turd.  

I came across a picture from a friend who recently had her second baby.  What stood out to me wasn't so much the doting dad and the sweet newborn.  It was the fern.  

In the background of the picture, there was a fern on the end table by their sofa.  I thought to myself, "What kind of wonderful human is able to keep a newborn, a toddler and a fern alive in the same house?"  This concept is totally foreign to me.  My girls would have eaten it.  The boys would have cut it down and then excavated it.  We would have bits of fern and potting soil from one end of our couch to the other end of the house.  The two - kids and indoor plants - simply cannot co-exist in this house.  We could find a place for the plant that was out of reach, but then I would inevitably neglect it, and it would die anyway.  No.  Houseplants are not for this house, and that friend on Facebook is officially my hero.

Now if you will excuse me while I continue to ignore the ant farm the kids made today on the patio with walnuts and compost scraps.  Nothing to see here folks.  I'm sure they won't find their way into the dining room. It's fine.  Everything is fine.            


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