Parenting II

We had ... (counting on my fingers) ... 17 people over at our house on Sunday for one of Joe's family potlucks. Everyone brought too much good food and the house was full of conversation. Nieces and nephews ran around our yard and played in a raucous game of Go Fish! in the living room. Just about every dish in our house was dirty by the end of the night, in addition to a small stack of paper plates, and the compost bin was full of corn cobs and watermelon rinds. It was good. 

After we waved our goodbyes and finished up the first phase of cleanup in the kitchen, though, Joe said he's getting a better idea of what it will be like to have our own children. 

A pint-sized greasy handprint left on the wall

I guess it seems different when it's our own carpet that the toddlers toss their food on, when it's our yard where they're sitting down onto my catsup-covered plate and tracking Play-Doh into the grass (even though that's a pretty good place to track the Play-Doh, in the general scheme of things). Joe gave the older kids oil pastels to color with, and now we can't seem to get all the pastel off our tablecloth. This is okay, Joe said, since we can just make that table our coloring spot. And we love the kids so much. But we do have the sense that once our home is inhabited by little ones, it will be a very different kind of home. And I imagine that might take some adjusting.