you have 100 or more finger and toenails that you are responsible for clipping.
…there is sand in your bathtub.
…someone at the pool asks you if you run an in-home daycare, and you respond, “Yes, for my own children.”
…there is Play-Doh in your carpet.
…you can’t give anyone a ride anywhere because your car is full to the hilt with carseats.
…when your husband says, “I have a really sexy idea!” you secretly hope it has something to do with you sleeping in or him buying milk, because that sounds sexy to you.
…you may as well own stock in a diaper company.
…when talking about your children, you use fractions. “Well, half of them are sleeping,” or “Two fifths of them take swimming lessons,” because it’s simpler that way.
…there is a toddler on your kitchen table right now.
…when you do laundry, it’s about 8.2 seconds before there are enough size 2T pants and miniature underwear to already make another load.
…you can recognize the phrase, “Boy, you’ve sure got your hands full!” in twelve different languages.
…you dream about Clifford the Big Red Dog.
…you don’t introduce your children to chocolate milk, because you know that once you do, making it is all you’d ever be asked to do.
…you lie awake at night thinking about how much peanut butter is left in the jar in the pantry.
…you own grubby sweatpants. And nice sweat pants. And maybe even church sweat pants.
…if you harvested all the dirt from under your children’s fingernails, you could plant a small garden.
…your fantasies include getting a permanent bladder catheter or at least a nice pack of Depends. For yourself.
…you’ve ever used a bunny rabbit hair tie in your own hair in a pinch.
…at the checkout at the grocery store, when stocking up for your family for the week, the clerk asks you, “You havin’ a party?” and you respond, “Yup, every day.”
…if you had a penny for the number of times you were asked “Are they all yours?” you could buy China. But you’d probably use the money instead to buy Desitin and baby shampoo.
…when you overhear another mother say to her child, “What, do you think I can just pull cheese out of my pocket?” you have to laugh. Because it’s funny. And because you’ve said something similar before.
…you commonly find small underwear, wet or dry, laying on the floor near the toilets of your home because someone didn’t want to go through the effort of putting it back on.
…your husband can get away with not mowing for longer than your neighbors can, because Many Small Feet trample the lawn down in your yard.
…your friends at church can’t remember which child of yours is which. And sometimes you can’t either.
…you’ve had to get over your dislike for worms, frogs, toads, mice, slugs, ants, snakes and beetles with claws.
…you’ve masted the art of pretending to be sleeping when you hear small footsteps coming into your room at 6 am.
…it’s not uncommon for you to look out your window and see at least two children of your streaking through the sprinklers in your backyard. When you thought they were reading library books in their rooms.
…you can’t hold all of your children in your arms at once, unless they are all piled on you on the couch, which happens on a nightly basis.
…when reading to your children at the library, other parents and children join you
because they think it must be story time.
…you have so many babies, that when you hear one crying on the baby monitor, you don’t even know who it is until you go check.
...your oldest son embarrasses you by asking another mother, “So, you only have two children!?”
…your family goes through more than a gallon of milk a day. Sometimes two.
…you wish garbage pick-up day was twice a week
…you are so accustomed to noise that when visiting a construction site, you wonder why everyone is wearing earplugs.
…there is more love in your heart than you could ever have imagined.
