7 Quick Takes: Or 7 Failures *Ahem* I mean less-then-perfect moments.

Most Thursday’s I participate in Small Successes from Faith and Family, and I am always struggling to find something I actually consider a success. So today I figured I’d stop fighting the urge to share the times that I wasn’t so successful.

We had a run-in with a mouse this winter. Meaning I actually saw him run across my kitchen floor on several occasions, and once even behind my couch. Traps were set up to no avail. I have no doubt that he was completely uninterested in the pathetic lure of a tiny fragment of food on the trap, when there were many much larger pieces of delectable treats left lying in obscure corners (and sometimes in the middle of the floor) by my toddlers. However, I never came across any teeth marks on anything, or even any poop. We had a warm snap in January where it actually got above freezing for a day! (This never happens) And after that, I never saw the mouse again. Eventually we stopped leaving out the traps, my theory is that he left during the warm spell. Anyways, while cleaning for my families visit in March, I moved the couch. And found out where the mouse had lived during his stay at our house.

Ever since that day, every time I get out the vacuum, my 3 year old mimics my reaction from that day and runs around the room yelling “look at this! there is mouse poop all over the place!”

On days when it is to cold to go outside, and there is plenty to do around the house, but we are all incredibly bored, I’ve been known to let the girls take multiple baths in one day so that they can play and have fun in a confined space and I can waste time on the computer.

Sometimes I get so far behind in folding (after avoiding the job for a while since it makes my toddlers get the urge to strip and play dress up) that we end up getting dressed from a pile mountain of clean clothing on the floor.

4.

I still have clothing 3 sizes smaller than my current size stored in boxes. I am not sure why I have kept them. I will never fit in that size again, but if I did for some bizarre reason shrink back down to the size I was when I was a teen, I never liked most of the clothes from that era of my life anyways.

Some days I am so distracted by caring for kids or whatever projects I am trying to get done, that it will be mid-afternoon by the time I realize that I haven’t sat down for an actual meal yet. I usually realize this after I have a mini blood sugar crash and yell at somebody. Yes, I do realize how important it is to eat more than a piece of fruit and a few jelly beans before 2 in the afternoon.

My 3 year old has this annoying interest in dragging everything that isn’t nailed down in one room, into another room and making a huge pile. I’ve gotten so tired of putting everything back only to have her build another pile later in the day, that lately I’ve been leaving it, sometimes even overnight. And eventually picking it all up when I have to dig through the pile to find my other shoe or the spatula.

My kids have been waking up at dawn despite all my best efforts to get them to sleep longer, and instead of waking up and facing the day, I’ve been letting them watch cartoons while I sleep another hour on the couch. Let me tell you, you have some strange dreams when you are dozing with Caillou and Dora in the background.