Warning

For those of you considering having large numbers of small children:

I did eight loads of laundry today and mopped the kitchen floor 3 times that I can remember. This is only slightly above average.

***

I had to come back and add to this post, because it got me thinking about the 'How many kids are you guys going to have' question. See, I get this question a lot. I don't know if it is that everyone of child-bearing age is constantly peppered with it, or just that we have managed to acquire so many children in such a short time that people wonder if we will ever actually stop.

I used to answer that I can't have anymore kids because my car is full. Then I had a dream the night before I bought Penny Mackineroni Girl that the very act of purchasing a seven-seat minivan caused me to become spontaneously and instantaneously pregnant with twins.

So now I stick to a safer answer: we already have three fish, three cats, three children and two grown-ups. If we're adding anything to this household, it will be another grown-up.

As it is, the pressure of keeping 11 creatures alive, healthy, fed, clothed, maintained, cleaned-up-after and at the right place in the right time can be fairly exhausting. When you add to that job list the fact that I am not only responsible for their physical bodies, but also feeding, nourishing and guiding their souls, it can be daunting.

Not as daunting, however as the reality that somehow the job title of Mommy includes the need to know the exact location of every possession of all eleven members of the household at any given time, as well as said object's status of clean, dirty, broken, fixed or irreparably harmed. Add to that mix the insane quantity of nearly-identical items that are accrued by two girls so very close in age and it is amazing that I have room left in my head at all.

For instance, laundry. I know, by sight, which shirt, pants, shorts, socks and panties belong to which girl. I know which drawer they belong in, what they match with, and I can often still recite to you either where I bought them and how much they cost or the name of the giver and the gifting occasion. While I find this to be rather spectacular a feat, no one ever seems impressed.

I know that the blue puppy is Dixie's while the pink is Melody's, that they were purchased at Walgreen's at Easter time by Granny, but that there were so many other gifts that they were sent home in a silver gift bag to be distributed later. They sat on my sewing machine table for three months, and were gifted by the Sleep Fairy to the girls. They are both named Tumble-bumble, Roly-Poly, Pell-Mell To The Bottom Of The Hill and Dixie's is missing it's blue ribbon with the white polka-dots because she was upset at nap time one day in September and tore it off in her dramatic upset. I also know that the ribbon is in a pink basket behind the printer, where it has been for several weeks, because I keep forgetting to put it back until Dixie has gone to bed, at which time RPTBPMTTBOTH is safely tucked under her arm for the duration of the slumber.

See, only the fellow mothers are impressed with this. Am I right?

So it all boils down to the real reason that I can't have any more kids: my brain is full.