You know the old saying about “when the cat’s away, the mice will play”, well it’s pretty much the same when Mom’s away.
When Mom’s Away…
The five-year old will sneak cookies for breakfast. And then con Dad into letting him have a gigantic ginger bread cookie on top of it.
Your mother-in-law will spend more time at your house than you had intended.
There will be food that you would never buy in your pantry. Cookies, Yodel, Pop Tarts, candy and Kool Aid. But there will be nothing in the house that constitutes real food.
No one will have cooked anything while you were gone but, your husband will give you a lecture about “not ordering too much takeout”.
You will find a pile of laundry that you can’t determine if it’s clean or dirty. Trust me it’s dirty.
No one will be sure when the children last bathed.
No one will take their vitamins or remember to give the dog his medicine.
The kids will need a sugar and grandparents detox, STAT.
Nothing will be in the right place. Kitchen towels will be in the bathroom, a bath towel will be hanging in your entry way, there will be a trail of socks through the living room and no one will know where their shoes are.
You will find the baby wearing clothes that are two sizes too big and wonder how that’s possible because those clothes were in the back of the closet and the appropriate sized clothes were RIGHT IN FRONT.
Someone will have deemed your cookie sheets unsatisfactory and they will have been replaced. Which has you questioning why someone was at your house long enough to make cookies. Though your cookie sheets really did need replacing.
No one will have looked for anything while you were gone. Which explains the sea of questions that start with “Mom, where is…”
The husband will be exhausted. The kids will need extra hugs. Your suitcase will remain unpacked and any bit of relaxation you had will quickly float away. But that little feeling that something was missing, that your hands were not full, that you had left something behind, that something was just a bit off will have vanished.
When Moms away there is no hope of coming home to a clean house, to everything being just so but when Moms away she comes home to lots of hugs and smiles and cuddles and for the first time since she left, things feel just right even if they are a bit messy.
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