What goes around comes back around

I stood in the laundry room at 5:30 in the dark morning, still and silent, staring at the mountain of clothes that lay heaped on the floor, with so much girth that I literally thought that one could hide a body under the size of that pile. I was up way too early and not quite awake, so who knows how long I actually stood there staring at the mound of dirty clothes. But I just stood there, contemplating how in the heck can those girls create SO much dirty laundry? I just did laundry three days earlier and look at it!

After what seemed like several minutes of gazing at the pile, which was probably realistically more like seconds, an old thought entered my mind. I thought I had all those years ago, when my girls were babies, after laundering load after load of messy onesies and burp rags, baby blankets covered in spit up, and crib bedding destroyed from yet another diaper blow out. I remember thinking that I couldn't wait for the day when I didn't have so much laundry to do. The day that they wore one outfit for the whole day and didn't throw up and poop all over everything they touched. And that day came.

However, as most things in life, they come back around and as I stood there in the wee hours of the day, I stood face to face with that fact. I'm doing just as much, if not more laundry now than I did when they were babies. And it may not be as gross but its way bigger and needs way more attention. Little did I know all those years ago.

I have also found that this cycle is also repeated with bottles and sippy cups. Year after year washing and drying bottle after bottle, sippy cup after sippy cup, carefully removing all the pieces so they get thoroughly clean and then assembling it all back together and putting it away in the cupboard, only to get it back out and use it again that same day. Doing this day after day sometimes multiple times, and hauling these bottles and cups wherever we went and constantly trying to keep track of them all so we don't lose any.

And tonight as I hand washed and set out to dry what seemed like 27 water bottles that the girls have used this week, I was reminded that here I am again. All these years later, taking time every day to take apart all the pieces of the bottles, cleaning them thoroughly, drying them overnight and reassembling them back together every morning so the girls can take ice water with them for the day. I am constantly trying to keep track of all of them and hunting them down when they're missing. Just like when they were babies, a missing sippy cup of milk MUST be found or else. Today is no different.

A missing bottle that one girl decided to put orange juice in instead of water HAS to be found or that may be the end of that poor bottle's life.