Sarah Anne I Am

   This past Friday I went to my parents house. I sat on the couch beside my youngest brother, my mother sitting on the floor in front of me as my kids played around her, and we watched old home videos of when I was two and half years old and my sister Anna was ten months old. I was wild and loud- standing on furniture, dancing and stomping and singing, running around and swinging toys that inevitably hit Anna in the face. The living room was littered with toys, and a basket or two of laundry sat in the corner.   It was like a photograph of my living room right now. And the kids, well, my children live from the same script- the same wild, the same loud, the same accidental injuries.   I looked at my mama and said, "No wonder I call you when it seems like no one really gets it. You get it. You've lived it."   But I think that, really, other people do understand my messy living room and how achingly exhausted I am by ten in the morning some days. But the ...

  Recently someone on Facebook posted something that bothered me. I didn't fly into a rage and comment viciously- I've been working on not commenting right away- or at all- when something bugs me, because often firing off a comment in the moment isn't most gracious ( more on this here ). But I've been thinking about it, so here we go.   This post was about moms with messy houses, and how there is no excuse for one. People commented largely supporting this- asserting that messes are the result of laziness on the women's part, and that unless you are disabled in some way, you have no excuse. "Especially stay at home mom's," one woman, a stay-at-home mom herself, said, "I want to ask them what they do all day." Another comment agreed that the more time you have at home, the more time you have to clean, and therefore less possible reason why it should be messy. In general, it seemed agreed upon that a few books on your floor for a short amount...