Chaos

Yesterday I was blessed to have my very good friend come over, bringing her two girls. The oldest is a little older than Livia and the youngest is about 15 months old. They are beautiful, wonderful little girls (that act like little girls. You know, sweet, demure, quiet..). In comparison, I have a rather unrulely, boyish brood.

My friend is exceptionally gifted with organizational skills and coming up with systems to make life simpler. She is amazing. We had talked about my bathroom closet before, and I had asked for some advice on how to pare down or how to make everything fit in one small space.

As all the kids seemed to be playing well, we decided to tackle this "little" project. In no time at all, everything from the closet was on the bathroom floor and we were sorting and tossing left and right. I had Tate with me. She had her youngest playing in a nearby bedroom.

Well, you can guess what happened, right? ALL the children ended up in the (very small) bathroom with us. I was hemming and hawing, looking at bottles of lotion and trying to decide if it was something I was really ever going to use. . . and she was sorting things into bins, and retrieving items that our girls kept pulling out. It was kind of chaotic. At one point we looked at each other and she asked, "What is that smell?" Uh-oh. The girls were playing in nail polish remover. Come on! This was a girl's dream: make-up, lotion, hair things. . . I think we were lucky that no one ate anything toxic. (But do we really know?!) Our mom-reflexes rescued our children more than once, while they were unaware. (Do you think we were overconfident to have razors and tylenol and toothpaste and other sundries on the floor? That's rhetorical.)

The good news is we finished the closet and it looks spectacular, (Did you know a closet could look that good?!) at least in my opinion. It is, at least, a huge improvement. And as our kids were melting down because it was time for lunch and naps, we were feeling rather good for accomplishing something.

I saw her last night and she had this to say, "I was thinking about this morning. That is probably THE MOST chaotic situation I have EVER been in. The kids were pulling things out as quick as we could put them away. . ."

"What? Two moms and six kids in a bathroom?" I laughed. "That was chaotic?"

She went on, "Then I thought, this is probably what EVERY DAY is like for the Curtises."

Yeah. I've been thinking on that. What feels like complete madness to some has become a normal level of activity to me. Did that happen along the way? I sure hope so, because that means that He can continue to grow me to rise up to the challenges of our growing family.