Life With The Girls

The other day I wrote about Zoe and Eva trying to take over our bedroom by moving their stuff into our drawers little by little. The next night, I had to take Nicky to the doctor, and while I was gone, they moved the rest of their stuff into our room.

They emptied all of their dresser drawers and put their stuff in backpacks and suitcases and loaded it all into our room along with most of their toys.

They were so proud.

And since they are so little, and it was bed time, all we could do was make them take it back in their room and go to bed, so everything ended up on the floor.

Yesterday I had to sort through every backpack and suitcase and put back all their clothes (have I mentioned that Zoe has a backpack obsession? She has like 12 backpacks, and she keeps convincing people to buy her more). In addition to the backpacks and suitcases, they also stuffed clothes inside toys, like the Doc McStuffins dog carrier and the Melissa & Doug shopping baskets.

I'm still not done cleaning it up.

But this experience made me realize something... MY DAUGHTERS ARE CRAZY.

And because of life circumstances, I am home alone with them a lot, and as soon as Scotty and Nicky are out of the house, they think it's party time. "Girls' Night! Girls' Night!" they chant, and then, without even consulting me, they come up with a list of 30 Girls' Night activities, and I have to crush their little spirits by telling them that we're not going to plant flowers, ride bikes, eat ice cream, put on make-up, and bake cookies to deliver to "everyone in our town" because we need to take baths, and by the time I replace the damaged subfloor and water-logged sheet rock that results from their splashing, it will be June.

I have been known to beg Scotty to not leave me alone with the girls. Most of the time, I don't have a choice.

Last night we went to my grandma's house to mow her lawn, and she gave the girls some real flowers so they could make flower arrangements (one of their many messy hobbies). On the way home, Zoe started the "Girls' Night!" chant and listed off all the things she was going to do at home. "We are going to go home and have a Girls' Night and put on dresses and decorate the house and have a dance party."

I compromised... You may put on dresses and dance, but you may not decorate!

When we got home, Zoe chanted "Girls' Night!" some more (even though Scotty was home) and then instructed everyone that it was time to "get ready." Then she started frantically running around the house yelling, "Mom! I need tape!"

TAPE!

The girl is always looking for tape, and I'm seriously considering becoming a tape-free household because... MY DAUGHTERS ARE CRAZY.

I asked her why she needed tape...

"TO TAPE FLOWERS TO THE WALL!!!"

I reminder her that there was to be NO DECORATING.

"I'm not decorating, I'm just taping flowers all over the walls to make our whole house pretty for our dance party."

Sigh.

I put my foot down. There would be no taping flowers to the wall. So Zoe found a loophole, of course, and stuck flowers in every nook and cranny: in the piano keys, in the bird cage, in the computer armoire, in between books...

I can't win. I can make a "no decorating" rule, and I can hide all the tape, and I will still lose every time.

I love them, I do. But they exhaust me. They're messy, demanding, and full of big ideas. They have many traits that will serve them well later in life when they are better capable of cleaning up their own messes.