I live my life in sheer amazement at the ability of my children to transform a clean area into complete wreckage in mere moments. My kids have super powers. As in Saturday-morning-cartoons-a-la-Captain-Planet-mega-powers. They simultaneously punch their little fists into the air and some random voice from the great beyond emits itself (sometimes with giant cartoon sound waves.) I don’t usually have a chance to listen, because I’m chasing them about the house attempting to subdue the chaos, but its some key phrase about letting their powers combine to destroy our home. Neatness=down to zero. These kids are little disaster inducing phenoms with individual tickers…waiting to go off on impact. 

Aiden embodies the characteristics of an octopus in a hurricane. We’ll call him Octorricane boy. A mammoth Octopus with a ridic plethora of arms combined with his intense speed and omnipresent ability to be everywhere at once. No room, surface, or area is considered safe. The noise. The speed. The intensity of it all...give him five seconds and anyone left in the wake of Octorricane boy’s path will rue the day.

Emerson is an exceptional force of nature. She possesses the lifelong ability to cause extreme amounts of sleep deprivation for her parents. When their guard is down, this uncanny strength is paired with violent Richter scale seismic quakes caused by extreme amounts of a not so delicate balance of whining and all out screams when denied any request. I’m quite surprised she hasn’t broken the glass in our home with her unreal achievements in octaves. Seizemo girl is quite the force to be reckoned with when she does not get her way. She can be quite exhausting.

A Tsunami with his special spittle powers and major horrid diapers a-la volcano of bodily fluids is Malone. He’s alternately known as Explosa-boy. You’re enjoying his presence like a nice pretty day on the beach, basking in his smile and his alluring, irresistible face when WHAMO! You’re totally sprayed with this sudden eruption of crap and regurgitated breast milk. The kid remains immobile yet maintains the ability to produce more laundry than Octorricane and Seizemo combined. The constant breastfeeding is a weapon of choice for Explosa boy, weakening his mother by yet another form of exhaustion, and furthering his cause for chaos. He has some mad projectile skills and sometimes intentionally aims for different areas of the room…exorcist style. His forcibly eliminated bodily fluids cannot be matched.

Our home has been declared a national disaster area. The coffee table is now a launching pad of Olympic high jump proportions. The piles of clutter and dust bunnies apparently mate at night, managing to multiply on their own even after they’ve been cleared for the fifth time in a row. The laundry is at its all time pinnacle of ridiculous proportions, growing daily. And yet here I am, once again, trying to keep my head above the diapers.

Hi. My name is Ashley. I quit. I am a reformed OCD clean freak, cured by time and the natural resources that are my own children. It’s a good day if I brush my teeth. I can’t seem to get my “act” together (whatever THAT’S supposed to be) I’m perpetually EXHAUSTED and for now, there are more important things in life than tending to laundry, repeatedly picking up toys and making the beds every SINGLE morning.

With a tag team super human triple threat on the loose, I just can’t beat them.

So, in celebratory surrender, I’m putting up my feet and joining their ranks with some stereotypical stay at home mom bon bons action, while I enjoy the forces of natural disaster with my latest DVR acquirement. All praises to mass chaos and Oprah.