Mom Tip #51

If you give a mom a grocery list, be ready to give her a cookie.

Did I mention that the Zoo has had 2 touring exhibits this week? Yeah well, we have. Needless to say it had been an interesting week. Which could explain a lot about this tip.

On my To Do list yesterday were three little words that I dread. “Make grocery list.” Ugh. But I pulled up my big girls and got to work.

If you give a mom a grocery list, she will write a few things on it. Then she will open the pantry to see what else is running low. In an effort to check the sugar, she will end up cleaning out and organizing the entire pantry only to learn that she is OUT of sugar. So she’ll write that on the list. She will then decide to check the other spices.

While in the spice cabinet (which she will also clean out and organize) she will remember that she has not taken anything out for dinner. She will go to the freezer to take something out and will start to stare blankly at the half gallon of rocky road ice cream. As water begins to drip from the ice maker she will snap out of it and run for the mop.

As long as she has the mop out, she will decide that this is a good time to mop the kitchen floor. Only when she opens the cabinet she will notice that she is very low on cleaning products. She should put those on the grocery list. The grocery list!!

She will try to focus and will open the next cabinet in line – the canned good cabinet. Can anyone say clean out and organize? As she writes tomatoes on the list she will remember seeing a coupon for tomatoes in the Sunday paper.

Two hours later after clipping, sorting, and filing coupons, she will try to remember what she was doing in the first place. Instead she will put away the (still dry) mop and switch out the laundry.

Then she will sit down and have a cookie. After all, she earned it! She’s been working hard!

Mom Tip #47

Your children got a mission and they chose to accept it.

To undo everything you have done with in seconds of completing it.

It started with the dishwasher. I was unloading and putting everything away. Munch was pulling all the Tupperware out of the cabinet behind me.

Then it was the living room. I put toys in the cabinet; she took all the pillows off the furniture. I put the pillows back; she took all the blankets off the fireplace. I folded and put the blankets back; she took all the toys out of the cabinet.

Moving on to the bedrooms, beds were unmade while shoes were put away. Stuffed animals were put in the laundry basket while beds we remade. Shoes went for a walk around the house while stuffed animals were sorted back out and put on their respective beds.

And speaking of the laundry basket! No need to sort while she’s around. The dirty stuff will end up in the dryer. The clean stuff will end up on the floor and the wet stuff will end up under the comforter on my bed. ::sigh:: I sorted it all out, got a load going and trudged to my room to fold. She insists on being on the bed while I am in the room. This was the perfect timing to unfold each pile, knock as much as possible on the floor, and smile and laugh the whole time.

I gave up. How can she undo vacuuming? So I started only to have the vacuum go dead in my hand. She had unplugged me. Not once but three times. I would plug it in, walk back to the vacuum, start it up and maybe get two passes in before it went dead.

Remember how I said that there were some days when you just were not going to get anything done? Today is one of those.