Before having kids I understood the vague notion that becoming a parent involved taking care of and cleaning up after my offspring. What I didn’t realize before having children was just how much cleaning I would have to do, and on top of that, how disgustingly filthy my household would become despite all of the continuous energy being directed towards scrubbing and sanitizing.

It all begins with the bodily fluids.

Anyone who has had an infant with a smidge of reflux can confirm that while you can valiantly combat the infant puke that threatens to cover every square inch of carpet, couch and human being nearby, you will lose every one of those battles. Trying to contain infant projectile vomit is like trying to stop an avalanche – there is really nothing to be done other than to stare in awe as the alabaster releases, blanketing everything in its path. There was a significant number of months during my life where I would regularly evaluate whether the quantity or location of the spit-up on my clothing warranted a wardrobe change or if I could get away with just rubbing it in.

Even past the baby stage, I’m on full-time puke patrol. Digestive tracts remain immature far longer than I imagined.  I’ve learned that a sudden cough, a bout of jumping, or eating too many french fries can result in immediate intestinal emission. There’s not usually much of a warning, there’s just vomit flowing out of faces. I once caught my daughter’s vomit in my hands before any of it hit the floor. I was ridiculously proud of that feat. I got a little cocky though and tried it again at a later point but it didn’t work out as well and I just ended up covered in puke along with the floor. A few weeks ago, my daughter threw up all over herself, and her car seat, in the church parking lot a moment before we were about to go in. When adults puke, we puke maybe a cup or two into the toilet. When a child pukes, they puke up enough liquid to cover the approximate volume of an African elephant, and it goes everywhere.

My husband is one of those people who pukes when he smells puke so for the entire hour plus car ride home after church he held a cup of coffee near his nose in an effort to block out the stench.  He pulled through the McDonald’s drive-thru to get a coffee, not to drink, but to sniff.

The car seat was so fully covered with puke, every inch of fabric strap and every crevice soaked completely,  that he seriously contemplated stopping at the store to get a new one and just throwing the old one away.  He mentioned this to me, and I just looked at the seat and shrugged my shoulders, because we can probably afford one, plus I knew I’d be the one who would have to clean up that puke and I loathe anything resembling manual labor.

Nothing can compare to what I did as a kid, though. I got sick while sleeping and leaned over the side of the bed and threw up straight into the heat vent (during winter, of course). I still remember the sound of my mom dry-heaving while cleaning up the stinking, steaming magma, equivalent in bulk to that of an enormous safari animal.

What puts us over the edge is the dirty dishes and the laundry.

I didn’t even talk about poop or pee but even without going there I think you are starting to understand why my laundry baskets fill up so quickly. While I consider the laundry to be a somewhat taxing chore, it’s the dishes that really kill me. From day one the bottles and baby food bowls caused the sink to overflow. In our household, we started cooking at home quite a bit more after having kids, which meant our own pots and pans were added to the already growing number of items getting thrown in the dishwasher each day. I take clean dishes out and put clean dishes into that damn dishwasher at least two or three times each day. And the dishes still pile up.  I try to alleviate the stress and make one-pot recipes or quick fix type meals. I sort of hate it when my husband cooks because even though his food creations are restaurant quality, the clean up also requires a full-time dishwasher, and guess who that is?  I love him when I eat his food, and curse him when I clean up later.

In my relentless pursuit to provide my family with clean sippy cups, I find myself abandoning the scrubbing of the actual sink itself. In my eternal exertion lugging loads of puke-soaked laundry up and down the stairs I find myself ignoring the spider webs that hang from the ceilings and that somehow manage to invade the window of the oven door. Ensuring that my family at least begins each day using sanitary utensils and wearing unsoiled clothing means I have no choice but to dismiss the dust bunnies in the corners of the rooms and forget about wiping down the baseboards.

Oh yeah.  Then there are the cracker crumbs.

I distinctly remember a moment when I hopped into my friend’s car to head to lunch.  Pre-Kid Me was appalled and disgusted by the amount of cracker crumbs that littered her vehicle.  It looked like someone had crushed up a bag of Goldfish into minuscule pieces and then opened the bag and just sprayed the bits everywhere.  I wondered what could actually have happened to cause such a mess. I swore that no matter what, my car would never look like that when I became a parent.

Hahahahahahaha.

That’s all I can really say about that. I don’t have time to elaborate. I have to go do the dishes.