While a hundred adjectives might not even sum up the first year of life with a new baby, today laundry will do just fine. Laundry. Laundry. Laundry. Not just the dirty kind – the spit up on kind, the diaper leaked on type, or the food smeared variety – but the a little too small, a little too long, not right for the weather kind as well. Sheesh, no wonder it seems like I am forever drowning in laundry. If I am not washing, drying, folding or ironing I am sorting, transitioning in, transitioning out, bagging up for the Christian thrift, storing for the possibility of another little person (don’t read too much into that – I said possibility) or tossing the really bad stuff in the garbage. Seriously, if a baby growing to nearly triple their birth weight within a year isn’t enough, we get to throw 4 seasons into the mix as well and let’s not even pretend that they might change sizes within a season because then we might as well just be sorting clothes at least once a month. Wow, maybe that’s why I feel there is always more laundry.

True, they do slow down as they get a little older. Tyler has calmed down to the twice yearly transition of Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter but he still finds a way to make his own contributions. In these amazing warm days, where we have shed coats and rid ourselves of socks my dear dirt-magnet of a boy adores being outside - adores it so much that he somehow bathes himself it – dirt of the powdery sort, the muddy sort or a combination of both, it’s everywhere. Of course such boyhood atrocities demand stripping said child prior to remittance back in the house and in the process we create, you guessed it, more laundry.

The truth is while I try pretty hard to stay on top of all the reconfiguring of sizes and seasons I’m not perfect. But, since I am the one home with the kids all day it usually works out okay. I know what fits and I know what doesn’t and I can dig around and find the right stuff to throw a properly fitting outfit together. The trouble is when someone else tries to dig around in those manic drawers. The ones with newborn shoes that wouldn’t fit half of Bailey’s foot but are in the drawer because they were her dedication shoes and I couldn’t bear to put them in the hand-me-down bin quite yet. And then there is the outfit that is size 12 months which could easily hold two little Baileys but it was a gift – one of my favorites, in fact – and I can’t put it somewhere else because I might forget about it. Along the way you might also find a 3-6 month diaper cover that goes with who knows what dress, some socks that fit my pinky finger and various colors of tights that don’t really seems to fit right no matter what size they are. Yes, the manic drawer that my husband must never be allowed to open lest he dress my child like an overgrown newborn, 12 month shirt which is now a dress, socks with the heal that rests mid-arch and matching? Let’s not even talk about matching. So, as I see it I have only two options – stay on top of this laundry madness or risk being solely responsible for dressing my children for the next half dozen years. Which reminds me, I gotta go – I’ve got laundry to do.