Throwback Thursday: Sometimes...

[There's apparently a "thing" in blogging circles called "Throwback Thursday" in which the blogger does not actually write a new post on Thursdays but instead posts a super old picture or something. I thought I might modify this trend and post old, unpublished blog entries from *waaay* back before we moved to Chicago. I don't have many of these, so it will be a short-lived feature. Some of these posts were just never finished; others were left unpublished because I never got around to adding pictures and ended up posting several other entries in the meantime. Sometimes these drafts were chopped up so that I could use bits of them in other posts, so you may or may not recognize a passage.

Today's previously-unpublished post was originally written in the first half of 2012.]

Before you get married, you have all these romantic notions of what perfect, wedded bliss entails: keeping your home more or less spotless, living well within your means and setting aside for a rainy day, always having perfectly-cooked meals on the table at a predictable hour, only ever "fighting" over who's being sillier at any given moment of time, and so forth. And then you actually get married, and everything's pretty much exactly as you thought it would be only better, and you know you're awesome. There is no "glass is half full" because your cup magically fills itself to the brim every day.

And then you have a kid, and life suddenly becomes a matter of priorities. And then you have another, and it becomes a matter of survival. Clean house? Cooking? Bah! Just help me make it through the hour!

Sometimes, you feel a great sense of accomplishment that you have showered more than twice in a week.

Sometimes, you don't remember whether you washed your hairbrush thoroughly enough--or at all--since last fishing it out of someone's mouth or the toilet. Or both. But you brush your hair anyway.

Sometimes, you go to bed dreaming of a time when you actually got more than 6 hours' consecutive sleep more that one night in a row. Or, you know--you *would* dream of such a time if you ever actually got any sleep.

Sometimes, you only get yourself out of bed by reassuring yourself that, perhaps, one day you will not need to be physically present for every single bowel movement that occurs under your roof. Perhaps, you will even be able to use the bathroom by yourself. Alone. With the door closed. And locked.

Sometimes, you wish you had kept your child in diapers until after the week-long bout of diarrhea. Live and learn, folks.

Sometimes, you feel indulgently naughty because you manage to read 1-3 pages of a book at a time.

Sometimes, you imagine that the Apocalypse must be right around the corner, because this is what your life has come to.

...But then, other times, you think maybe you're exaggerating. Not about the Apocalypse thing, of course, but about the fact that what your life has come to is a wholly negative thing. Like when your oldest son starts stumbling drunkenly around the room moaning, and your youngest runs in circles around him, screaming "I'm zombie Robkers!" [True story. Where they got the zombie reference I may never know.]

Other times, you enjoy snuggling up with several blankets and two warm children to read 1-3 books at a time.

Other times, your two year old shouts out "I love bumblebees!" or "I love twenty!" at the dinner table for no reason you can think of.

Other times... maybe the glass is half full after all.

{And now the requisite pictures:]