Productivity

People who say that having children means the end of all productivity do not know my children. Let me just use last Wednesday as an example of what I mean. Last Wednesday by 6:45 am, while I poured myself a cup of coffee, Isaac had painted a picture of a Japanese woman in front of her authentic Japanese home in acrylics. Ian had played two games of bowling and had gotten past two new levels of Indiana Jones on our Wii. While I attempted to put some clothes in the dryer, Ben climbed up on the counter and took out every vitamin, cough drop and chocolate chip from the cupboard. He also took all the candy canes off the tree and ate two, while stashing the others in some secret spot I have yet to discover - I only know it exists because he keeps showing up with candy cane sticky face at random times throughout the day. By 8 o'clock a.m. in the time it took me to use the restroom and splash my face with water, the older boys had made a pillow fort, thrown about 1000 verbal insults at one another, pushed, shoved, stuck stinky feet in each other's faces and had broken the sound barrier while telling me through the bathroom door the injustice of having brothers. Ben in that time had quietly gone outside in his feetie pajamas and had watered all the plants with his squirt bottle, getting his feet-ie pajama - clad feet all wet and muddy and had also found the time to pull some stuffing out of an old pillow in the garage and rummage through some bags to find an old piece of Easter candy from last year.

I could go on. But I am exhausted just recounting the day to you. Let me just sum up. I believe by the end of the day I had (I think I remember this correctly) gotten dressed and eaten at least one meal although most likely standing up - unless Ben was on my lap eating it off my plate before I could get a bite. The boys had continued on pace. Isaac invented a couple things, searched for gold with his metal detector, created a new Indian tribe complete with it's own language, made a tornado - sized wreck of his room, lost his shoes at least 10 times, and managed to get more food on the floor than in his mouth for all three meals, putting his 2 year old brother to shame. Ian found a way to push every single one of Isaac's buttons, played more video games than I care to write in case this would incriminate me as a bad mother (although this blog is called "confessions,,," after all and it IS Christmas break). He rode his bike and went back and forth to the neighbor boy's house every five minutes for about 5 hours and managed to suck a little bit more of my sanity while he worked his weird reverse-psychology meets manipulation- meets overly emotional and overly sensitive middle child- magic on me. Benjamin jumped on the bed where I had neatly folded and sorted the laundry just moments before, helped me wash the windows by spraying an entire bottle of windex on the kitchen french doors, spilled his hot chocolate all over the livingroom carpet, organized the cupboards next to the refrigerator where I keep anything even sort-of resembling a sweet, and had made paper airplanes out of our pile of bills on the computer table.

Like I said, our family should be proud. Three young boys in the house could mean that not a thing gets done all day long. Thankfully that is not the case around here. We are one highly productive crew.