she's torturing me on purpose

Of all the things I gave up when I started birthing babies (like sleeping in, coming and going whenever I please, not sharing my secret chocolate stash...stuff like that) the thing I miss most is my clean house.

Mostly it's clean. I control the things I can, like the kitchen, the bathrooms and my bedroom. The dining room table has seen its fair share of mess. I don't like it, but in the winter when we can't go outside and are forced to do art projects, that's where it happens.

Sometimes I try to avoid the front room altogether. Why go around picking up toys if they're just going to get dumped out again as soon as I walk out of the room? I don't know. Why do I do it anyway? I can't help it. Why don't the kids clean up after themselves? I'm baffled.

Of all the other messes around here, I've decided that this pink play kitchen will be the death of me. I recently moved it from the corner of the dining room (where it was rarely ever played with) to another wall (where it is much more visible and gets played with every single day). I'm happy that Cate plays with it more. Really I am. I'm even happy that Danny sometimes plays with it now.

I'm just not so happy about the mess. I'm messy in the real kitchen sometimes too so I understand what happens when you make pretend pizza and ice cream soup. A mess. It bothers me because it's a mess in a high traffic area. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and it irks me to have to look across the room and see plastic oranges, eggs and cobs of corn all over the floor.

So I tidy up Cate's kitchen every day. Not while she's playing with it, of course. I have the decency to wait until she's moved on to making a mess in some other room of the house.

A few days ago I was putting things away and closing little doors. She heard me. (I really should be more quiet in the future). She looked over at me from the couch in the other room. She was not pleased.

"Nooooooooo! Messy!"

Then she proceeded to undo the good that I had done. I'm convinced that she's figured me out by now and that she's doing it on purpose.

Either that or she just needs a nap.