Sometimes, I am the Old Lady in the Shoe

Really, it snuck up on me just like the transition from tubs of formula to jars of baby food.

Like when I turned away from a crawling baby only to spin back around to face a wobbly toddler.

When, I ask, did my four children start eating me out of house and home?

When did I go from one pound of meat resulting in leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch to nearly two pounds not being enough!

Once upon a time, a box of frozen waffles could last a week. Now it barely makes it through the morning A pound of bacon? Scarfed down like my yellow lab used to inhale a bowl of dog food.

Cookies? Fuggedaboutit. Anything with a chocolate chip doesn’t stand a long life in my house.

And ice cream? The scoop comes out and the cookie-dough devastation begins. When cartons shrunk a few years ago due to the milk crisis, the deal was sealed.

I’m back to the days when I used two grocery carts, one for the kids and one for the provisions. I’ll even go so far as to admit that sometimes the food was piled on top of the kids. Except now I need two grocery carts just for the food!

While the food is depleting at a rapid rate, other things in my home are increasing in size as the kids grow.

Laundry – no longer cute little piles of onesies and applesauce-stained bibs – has become enormous mountains of jeans and dirty t-shirts. A living organism, if you will, that no matter how much I throw into the washer, seems to replenish at the rate of gremlins.

There used to be a little pile of shoes in the bedrooms. Now, tiny sneakers have evolved into smelly clown-sized kicks. And kicked they are, all over the living room. According to the children, the boots and sneaks and loafers have all crawled to their random positions all on their own.

My dishwasher, once filled with tiny spoons, plastic sippy cups and bowls of discarded goldfish crackers and run a few times a week has morphed into a constant rotation of loading and unloading once or twice a day.

And then there are the problems. Those have grown too. It used to be the boo-boos were pinched fingers and scraped knees. Now they are related to misunderstood friendship rules, challenging homework and worries about life and death.

I’ll admit I struggle to keep up with it all. There are times when it all gains so much momentum that I feel like I’m chasing a rolling rock down a steep hill.

But then at the end of the day, there are the other things that have grown: the fun memories, the personalities that make me laugh out loud and the stronger hugs that say goodnight at the end of the day.

And that is food for the soul.

From March 15,2011 Patch.com