A recent post by one of our favorite bloggers, Kelcey Kintner, the mom behind The Mama Bird Diaries.
When you have four young kids, your life is an endurance test. Each day you feed, clean, and care for your offspring so that you can be awarded the grand prize at nightfall of no longer having to answer any kid questions while you relax on the couch watching your favorite shows.
You rarely (if ever) spend a day meandering through the city laughing, holding hands, putting your head on his shoulder as you sit side by side in an early afternoon movie.
It’s never just the two of you in a candy store, him staring at you in loving disbelief as you fill a bag with malted milk balls, sour patch kids, gummy coca colas and candy corns, wondering how you can eat such dreck.
You no longer wander around Pottery Barn, pointing out your favorite things to place in an imaginary house that you may some day build together.
You have a house. Together. It’s filled with sh*t from Pottery Barn. And it’s a mess.
You don’t have long, enchanting days together. Instead, you have small romantic moments. Moments that remind you of your love and appreciation for each other.
And just the other day, during a small respite, when the twins were napping, Dylan was taping, gluing and cutting some kind of card that would strongly resemble a ransom note and Summer was finding new ways to distribute glitter throughout the playroom, Rick and I found ourselves alone in the kitchen.
A moment for just the two of us.
He wrapped his arms around me and said, “You smell so nice.”
What a sweet thing for my husband to say.
Maybe it was my freshly washed skin. Or a hint of my perfume. Or the grapefruit essence of my shampoo.
Except I hadn’t yet showered that morning. “Order perfume” has sat idly on my to do list for months. And I hadn’t washed my hair in a couple, well, several, well, let’s just say, quite a few days.
“Honey, smell the counter tops,” I said. “Is that what you are smelling?”
It was.
Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day counter top spray in geranium scent.
It’s apparently the new scent of romance and love.
Kelcey Kintner is a New York mother of four (including twins). Yes, it’s a lot of children. She blogs at The Mama Bird Diaries, a humor parenting site. She also dispenses advice you can’t possibly live without at The Mouthy Housewives.