Inquiring minds out there want to know what it’s like to live with children? It goes a little something like this…..

Food & Snacks: There are traces of food literally everywhere including your car, your purse, your floors, their backpacks and anywhere that has a solid surface. Speaking of food, should you be caught without a snack to hand out in the school pick up line you’re in serious trouble. When a kid wants a snack they predict near death if they aren’t satiated within a five-minute window. Scary times. Gum apparently is the sixth food group. You will find wads of it stuck or “saved for later” in the most peculiar places.

Laundry: The laundry situation is indescribable. You are to blame when there’s nothing to wear. You are a wretched being when you ask them to help sort said laundry. And you will undoubtedly wash clean clothes as much as you wash dirty clothes because the hamper is their favorite place to dump freshly washed wears.

TV: You are no longer able to leisurely watch episode after episode of Dateline because, well, they are around and hearing about the latest murder scheme isn’t the healthiest of moves. And, by the time they’re in bed you won’t be able to find the TV remote anyway even if you did want a good binge session.

Play Time: When it’s beautiful out you will tell your kids to go play outside. They will argue over who gets what scooter, bike or ball. And you will then be asked one trillion times plus a billion when this “play outside” torture is going to be over.

The car: However many kids you have is precisely how many front seats you should have in your car. That front seat is the Holy Grail and apparently the backseat is a pool of hot lava that will surely melt the poor kid who didn’t steal the front seat first.

Shoes: Everywhere. Always dirty. Never fit. Can’t find. Stolen by some mysterious intruder. And by the time they are found they don’t fit and they’re dirty and now they’re missing the other shoe that makes the pair.

Dinner: If dinner isn’t pizza, mac-and-cheese, or able to be dipped in ketchup you’ve screwed up and what you prepared is inedible and sometimes vomit inducing. You’ll find broccoli hidden in nearby houseplants and lettuce leaves with Ranch as a binding agent stuck to the underside of your table.

Toys and Stuff: You will some day run right over a bike. And it will be all your fault. There are Nerf bullets stuck in your vacuum cleaner. There will be toys stuck in the drain line of your washing machine. There are ping-pong balls on the top of your kitchen cabinets. And you may have the luxury of paying a plumber to retrieve a flushed item down the toilet because they just wanted to see what would happen.

Bedtime: This is the point in the day that their energy level will mysteriously peak. Their bed is now a trampoline. They suddenly want to read one thousand pages of a book. And the darkness of lights out will be no signal to their brain that it’s time to shut-er down.

Then there’s the hugs, the kisses, the (rare) thank you’s and the little notes they leave from time to time declaring their love for you…. And you live to fight another day.