When I grow up I want to be a stay at home mom.

Here are some things I have encountered lately as I carry out my life's ambition to stay at home.

Huge wads of toilet paper (thankfully clean) have been randomly showing up in the kids bathroom and the hallway. This started approximately November 18, 2010. We aren't sure of the culprit yet. :) I did suggest to one of my children that it's a good idea to stop playing with the TP. We'll see how it goes.

I helped Matthew clean his room today. I found a casket a key, an ID tag for a dead person (which Matthew made for himself last time he went to work with Ken, including his day of death - which thankfully has already passed,) and the top half of a sock. Apparently there was a big whole in the sock so he cut the bottom off and said the top part fit perfectly on his arm. There were several other 'gems' but those I thought deserved mentioning.

I am not a psychic. I don't have eyes in the back of my head. BUT, I know when you are sneaking out of your bedroom to play in the water in the bathroom. How do I know? I can HEAR you!

Nicole can almost play 'I Lived in Heaven' perfectly. She's been practicing it a lot. I'm so excited for her!

Matthew brought me a polaroid of him at age 1 at the Mexican Restaurant in a sombrero. He asked me if he was a Mexican. I told him yes. He started counting in Spanish but couldn't remember 10. (Diez) I told him he was a dumb Mexican. He called me a racist.

Being a stay at home as a child meant I got to stay home from school and watch TV all day, even though my mom did A LOT more than that during her life as a stay at home mom. The laundry was always done! folded and put away too.

Being a stay at home mom as a stay at home as the mom means cleaning up the same messes over and over again, day after day. Always having 2 more loads of laundry to do and wanting to take a nap way more often than you actually get to. It means hugging your child goodbye in the morning, missing him all day when he's gone and being so excited when he gets back home at the end of the school day while working on 7th grade at home and learning everything you can about fractions, number lines, graphs and grammar during my school day. Recently I've re-added teaching the alphabet, musical alphabet, counting and coloring in the lines to my list of requirements.

I'm so tired I can't keep my eyes open. It's 100 times more work than I did when I worked full time in the classroom. It pays A LOT less.

I'm pretty happy with my position.