I'll Tell You What I WON'T Be Doing!

When people realize that I am soon to have 4 out of 5 Colony kids in school by mid-July the first question that always comes to mind is...

"What are you going to do with yourself?!"

My initial thoughts always pull me into this hazy, dream-like world of adult book reading with NO pictures of baby animals and bright primary colors, bon-bon eating, monthly meal planning, keeping house and the such.

But then, out of nowhere, I hear something: little feet running away, followed by 4 other little voices yelling for me NOT to enter the kitchen...not yet, anyway! (my older kids know what I can and cannot handle at the moment)

I'm quickly pulled back into real life.

This life where I am the mama to the most destructive 2-year-old on the face of the planet!

I mean just today (and it's only 12:30pm, mind you) we have cleaned up spilled glitter off the dining room floor (he scaled the homeschool corner cabinet and somehow pulled it off the TOP shelf near the ceiling), a bottle of spilled pink fingernail polish (from who knows where, because the girls have very specific rules on that kind of stuff, for this exact reason), spilled coffee (he doesn't care WHAT I'm drinking when he comes in for a tackle), leftover mouthfuls of food (why won't he just finish chewing and swallowing that last bite?!), a pink Jude (from the fingernail polish remnants), orange highlighter (those highlighters. He has a highlighter radar!), Rainy's slippers which he trampled through the mud, a raided ColonyShop of little clips and gems (the ColonyShop creators were NOT pleased!), and I still smell the orange essential oil that he emptied all over his bedroom from 2 days ago as he smeared himself in shampoo...

We have all of our lower cabinets childproofed with locks (including the pantry now, thank you Josh!) with those annoying plastic contraptions on doorknobs in order to keep curious little paws out, but Jude is a pretty persistent kid and if he sees something he wants, by golly, he'll find a way to get it, even if we are all in the same room.  He's like a little Houdini!

I swear the good Lord is stretching me in every which way and I promise I'm learning to have more grace and compassion toward "these" kinds of children and their exhausted families:)

So, to answer your question, I probably won't be doing any more exciting things than I am now, with 4 of my 5 littles in school, but at least I will be able to clean up Jude's mayhem at a quicker pace with only him to keep up with.

Oh Jude...