I Need a Shower!

I do.  Seriously.  Not the traditional kind with soap, water and shampoo.  I mean the kind of shower when your close family and friends get together, throw a party in your honor and give you new things.  The other night I was in the bathroom washing my hands with soap from a disposable Hello Kitty dispenser.  I declared out loud that we have "nothing nice anymore".  Sara asked Chuck what I was talking about, he said Nothing...mommy is just talking to herself.

It is true.  Since we have had kids we have nothing nice.  We used to.  When we were living in Peabody we had a really nice place, nice furniture and a presentable home.  Then we had kids.  We no longer have anything nice.  Let's take a "virtual" tour of my home.

The Kitchen:  First let me say Shame on Us for going with white cabinets when we renovated.  What were we thinking?  I think the cabinet company should not be allowed to sell white cabinets to people with children.  They looked good for about 2 days.  Children are gross and everything they eat is sticky and brightly colored.  The cabinets quickly became polka dot cabinets.  They never look clean no matter what I do.  I do use the Magic Eraser which is great, but somehow in addition to getting rid of dirt and grime it magically erases the fingerprints from your finger tips.  I can only use it every 6 weeks or so...I am in the "not using it" cycle...I am waiting for my epidermis to grow back.  I get nervous that something bad is going to happen to me right after I use the Magic Eraser and my body won't be identified because my fingertips are blank.  Plus, to add to my paranoia I don't think Chuck has any clue who or where my dentist is located so using dental records for an ID is out, or maybe that would be the ideal time for him to commit the perfect crime.  I better be nice to him after I finish the spring cleaning...If something does happen to me I go to Chestnut Dental...

We also went with a stainless steel fridge.  Big mistake, 1.  Magnets don't stick to it and tape sticks too much so we have all the kids art work hanging on the cabinets.  But I guess that cuts down on the dirty cabinet effect.  2.  No matter what the fridge NEVER looks clean!!!  I have tried everything.

Here is a mysterious phenomenon....since my children entered my life  I have not had matching Tupperware.  True. Instead we use the plastic containers  that lunch meat comes in.  I don't quite understand the correlation of disappearing Tupperware and kids...but it is there. 



The Dining Room:  Which in our house is just the left hand side of the kitchen.  I bought myself a really nice dark brown dining room set.  It was so sleek and pretty.  The kids ruined it.  It is now a dull grey color with some permanent fabric paint stuck too it.  No matter how much I scrub it it looks gross and you wouldn't want to eat off of it.  People must think we are fancy when they come over...we always have a table cloth in the dining room.  Oh la la...BUT, one of my creative cleaning tips...purchasing table cloths that are the same color/pattern on both sides so when one side is dirty I just flip it over to get a few more days out of it...has been foiled!!!  Chuck got the girls some paints for their crafts.  They had a blast, unfortunately they were the aforementioned permanent fabric paints and now my favorite table cloth only has one "good" side.  UGH!!


The Bathroom:  Just gross all around.  We have a potty seat in there on the off chance Anna ever decides to become civilized and stop crapping her pants.  Occasionally Sara pees in there, closes it and never tells anyone.  That is always a nice surprise.  Since using tub crayons, foam soap and all the other UTI causing tub toys the tiles have a slightly grey tinge to them.  And the reason behind the "We have Nothing Nice" rant the other night, the hand soap dispenser.  I bought a nice new one.  Sara picked it up somehow it "sipped" and broke.  I purchased an exact replica, surprisingly it suffered the same fate.  I gave up and went with the plastic Dial Hello Kitty.  Someday I hope  to have a nice hand soap dispenser again.

Oh and towels turn disgusting when you introduce kids.  We got some really nice soft, cream colored towels for our wedding shower.  Now thanks to the kids and them using towels to clean up any mess from paint, food or poop.  They will never be the same.  It is a shame really.

My Bedroom:  I have declared my bedroom as a kids free zone.  No one cares.  As I sit here in  bed writing the blog I can see a juice box (not mine), plastic jewelry, a pumpkin flashlight and some assorted dress up clothes.  Whatever.  But take a look at the full length mirror in my room and you can get a pretty good glimpse into Sara's psyche....there are red lipstick kisses all over it.  She either really loves herself or I am going to have a HUGE problem on my hands when she is about 13 and decides boys aren't gross.


The Living Room:  I bought my living room set a month before Sara was born.  The salesman tried to get us to buy the special fabric protection.  We didn't he had an exasperated look on his face as he stated that we will be the one parents in America without it.  We poo-pooed his notion.  Jokes on us!!!  The couch is gross now.  Oh, we could flip the cushions and start over, but sadly we did that a while back and now there is no "good" side.  If you ever need a hair clip, old Popsicle stick, random crayon or old forgotten goldfish just lift up one of the cushions and you will hit the preschooler jackpot.

We have my sisters old rocker.  She passed it on to my brother and he rocked his baby on it.  I used it to rock my babies.  I am not usually sentimental about "things" but I kind of like it.  Well, it is a bit old (13 years old in fact), the ottoman recently began to wear.  At about the same time I noticed all this fluff floating around the house.  Anna noticed the small tear and went to town pulling all the stuffing out.  Now the ottoman is a deflated pile of fabric.  Sad, very sad.

For Sara's birthday we got her a trampoline.  We were so excited we put it together right away.  In the living room.  Well, turns out it is just slightly bigger than our doorways.  It has been stuck in our living room for a little while.  Since October 27th to be precise.  I suppose we could take it apart and move it, it would make sense...our house is on the small side and every little square foot helps out.  But that would require effort and neither Chuck or I have been willing to put for any effort to remedy this.  I am sure it will be there until we sell the house.  Oh, and we got it for her because they always jump on the couch.  Now they play animal shelter with the trampoline, put their animals in it and hang adoption certificates all along the side, get out and jump on the couch.


Their bedroom: The beautiful lime sherbert paint color has been covered over by a dingy sheen.  It might be from writing on the walls with chalk or rubbing makeup into the wall, I am not actually sure of its origin.  I just know that short of repainting it isn't coming off.  They insist on torturing any hair salon styling head they have.  They all end up looking like Carrie on prom night.   I don't understand their thought process sometimes.  Do they really think Dora looks better with marker in her eyes?  Or chalk in her ears?

They both have wooden letters spelling out their names over their beds.  Sara always mixes her up.  I swear if she changes it to ASRA one more time I am going to insist on calling her that.  Anna will forever be known as NAA...she always loses the other "n". 

Last night I went to put Sara to bed and she started gagging as soon as she climbed up the bunk.  Turns out she put Lucy's wet cat food up there because Lucy wanted to eat up there.  Really? Did she express that desire to you Sara?  Gross!!

The basement: So we do have a bathroom and family room down there.  It is major need of a renovation and we are planning on doing that project next.  We did paint it a pretty yellow and spruced it up in the meantime.  We are probably a year or two away from gutting it.  Well, I went down there recently, I do tend to avoid it for months at a time.  Chuck gave the girls some paint and brushes and told them to have at it.  Now there are trees, birds and butterflys adorning the walls.   I think my kids art work is cute, however, if anyone else went down there it just looks like green blobs on the walls.  So now, even if we wanted to have real people down in that space, we can't....

**So in addition to what I have already included keep in mind when we moved in we switched all the doors from dark wood to white doors.  Big mistake.  I don't know what evil things are lurking on my kids hands but all the doors have this brown grime caked on right at their hand level.  I swear my kids hands don't ever look that dirty to cause such devastation. 

Anna fancies herself an artist and prefers the mediums of pen and Sharpies.  We have a gallery full of her work on the walls throughout the house.  No area is overlooked she loves to decorate the floors with stickers.  Why put them on plain old paper when you have hardwood floor to adhere them to?

If you come over you will see that on the surface my house is always clean.  I like to keep up with it so I can do spur of the moment play-dates....but look closely and you will see nothing is nice anymore.

So I have decided to start a new tradition.   A Post Baby Shower.  I think about 4 years out would be perfect.  It would be to replace all of the nice things you got for your wedding shower that the kids have inevitably ruined.  I think it should start with me.  I will be willing to test out this new event.  So family and friends  I like simple and classic design, functional over fancy and you may want to invest in the fabric protector plan if you are getting me furniture.  I know that Sundays are the usual shower days but I work on Sundays  I am free on Saturdays though...