A Good Excuse To Clean The House

People think I’m lying when I tell them how much my kids and I cook together. I don’t blame them. I would think they were lying if they told me the same thing. Only a Saint would have the patience to cook with kids. Since I’m not a Saint I must be doing it to make up for all the rest of my bad Mothering.

Cooking with kids is impressive but somehow, when my kids whisper into someone’s ear, “Our Mom makes us wash ALL the dishes,” that sounds more like child abuse. I don’t know why. It takes the same amount of patience to teach children to clean as it does teaching them how to cook. Why don’t I get credit for that?

It’s a big fat lie by the way. My children do nothing close to washing all the dishes. I wash all the big things and every single dish they wash has already been scrubbed by ME and put in the wash tub for them to swish some bubbles around on it. How else could a 6 year old get the dishes clean? She couldn’t. Just ask my sister. She couldn’t figure out why every dish Persistence washed still had food stuck to it.

Lovely insists on helping with the dishes. Every. Single. Day. We wash and she rinses with her little scrub brush. Can you see the look on her face saying, “Can you please not bother me when I have such grown up work to do?”

The big kids are off on a road trip with the Gallagher for a week so Lovely and I are celebrating by cleaning house. That’s the first thing I do whenever the kids have been gone for an extended time. That way I get to have a clean house with my peace and quiet. Next I think I’ll take a nap. Anything to put off the real work I need to do. Like bricking the fireplace, painting the house, pouring the cement. No. I don’t really do all those things but I have to find someone to do it and that is a lot of work!