Lived In

Saturday morning found us all home. No soccer games to rush off to, nothing on our calendar. We slept in and got moving pretty slowly. Being on the go the 2 previous days, had left our house kinda messy. So we straightened things up and did some laundry. The house looked pretty good and it was only early afternoon.
The kids played the rest of the day. The Baby followed them around. When she napped, I laid on the toy room floor and read to the big kids. We had a tea party for supper, even Bubby participated. I spent time reading cookbooks, messing around on the computer, watching tv and doing nothing productive. It was wonderful.
Then bedtime came. Everyone was in bed and I took a look around the house. OH MY! A pink camo child's play rifle lay across the bathroom sink, kept company by a pile of the Husband's clothes on the counter, (not down the dirty clothes shoot). His boots rested under the computer. A toy car seat with a stuffed butterfly was in the middle of the kitchen floor and bits of popcorn, from the tea party, scattered around the table. A pair of boots and dress-up clothes were forgotten on the toy room floor, right where we walk. The sink had amassed quite a collection of dishes - tea cups and saucers, bowls and spoons. There was stuff everywhere. Not like a destruction zone, but in a very lived in sort of way.
It made me sad. First, because I struggle with wanting my house to stay picked up. And then because the realization that someday it will stay picked up and I'll miss my kids (maybe not the mess, but most assuredly the kids).
I teared up sitting on the edge of Leeny's bed. If you saw the girls' room, you'd tear up too.
Each girl had several dresser drawers open, shoes on the floor, clothes scattered about. There were purses on the rocking chair and little girl treasures in every corner. That's where I had my realization. Kids=messes. I know I knew that, but somehow it became more real. More ok.
Some of the stuff that the kids make messes with, I'd like to throw away. Not because I don't like their stuff, I just don't like where they leave (or scatter) it. Examples - the Bug's purses, dress-up, nail polish that she leaves all over her room. Bubby's books and magazines that he leaves on his bottom bunk and around his bed even though he has a bookcase right next to it. Leeny's, well you never know what she's going to collect (once she cried over not being able to sleep with a chicken heart).
These things are what make them who they are. Obviously not in a spiritual sense. Bubby without books and little trucks and tractors, the Bug without her girly stuff, Leeny without whatever it is she's into, the Baby without dragging stuff around....oh, my house would be picked-up alright. But I don't think it would be a lived-in home. And a lived-in home is what I want.