This morning I had a lot to do. After escaping out of town to wish my dad a “Happy Birthday!” and then spending a couple days writhing around in more inexplicable gastrointenstinal pain [still not going away, but is on-and-off enough to not warrant us going into debt going to a specialist] I had a monstrous all-day pile of laundry and dishes to tackle while the hubs did a three-day overhaul on the house.

I pull a load of laundry from the dryer, wrangle it into the living room, plop it on the couch and begin to fold. I’m only sort of paying attention as I’m folding and watching “Secret Celebrity” (it’s actually really cute for a fluff, no-brainer, background-noise show) in which Kim Kardashian plays a giant nerd to see if her fans would sell her out behind her back. As I’m nearing the end of the load, I look down and see that Chloe has meticulously taken every piece of folded laundry and moved it onto the pile of “To Irons” on one of the wing-back chairs in the corner. She is helping. I giggle and say, “No, silly! We have to keep it all over here!” and I start to move it all back, but she shoves me aside and insists, “Me do it!” She then proceeds to move everything back into the pile on the couch, taking each piece one-by-one. When she is finished moving the pile, she points at it while looking at me for approval. When I applaud and give her gracious compliments, she excitedly begins the cycle all over again, in hopes to earn even more approval and praise. From me.

I have a lot to do. I’ve got to get all this done and the house straightened and myself showered in time for my old-GS-friend reunion this evening and it is already 11 a.m. Instead, I am sitting on the floor, watching my child gleefully destroy everything I’ve been hurriedly trying to fix in order to create some sort of competent public appearance and realizing that she’s giving me a lesson on how none of it effing matters, like some miniature sage, stuffed to the brim with giggling wisdom.

God, I love being a mom.