Little Old Man

Our laundry has been out of control.  More than usual.  I've never succeeded at doing a load a day to keep the laundry monster away.  Once a week I wrestle that monster into temporary submission. And I do mean temporary.  As soon as you get all 102 pieces of clean, sweet smelling, perfectly folded laundry put away, there are four outfits and three wet towels in the hamper.  Talk about killjoy.

I have not defeated the monster in a long time.  I'm talking weeks.  That's no big deal in the summer when all we need is a shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.  The girls and I can get by with just one garment--the blessed sun dress.  How I miss those!  And sometimes the kids don't even need that.  They run around next to naked!  But in the winter we need one if not two shirts, pants, and for the girls a skirt on top of those, and two warm, matching socks.  In addition to that, I get the daily battle with snow pants, boots, 30 hoodies and coats--there are only five of us here!--hanging in the entryway, gloves, hats, scarves....

I miss summer clothes.

But here I am belly aching, when I just came to share a cute Gizmoism.

As all-boy and messy as Gizmo can be, he relishes the independence of keeping his clothes in order and getting dressed everyday.  The dirty ones lay around on his floor until I nag, but on the front end he enjoys himself.  His drawers are always neat with the appropriate garments in the appropriate places.  He loves to get dressed, and he actually has a very cool, personal sense of style.  Since we got him a robe and two sets of matching pj's for Christmas, he will emerge from his room in the evening and early morning looking like a little old man donned in said pj's and robe.  It is so cute, which we cannot tell him because that would be embarrassing.  

The last few weeks have been very hard for him.  He's been restricted to wear whatever I unearth from the bags of clean clothes.  And socks.  Oh the socks!  You might wonder why I torture myself and my son and not just fold the dang things.  Well.  I'm trying.  I'm not succeeding but I'm trying.  Anyway, the cuteness:

Gizmo approached me tonight after bedtime.  He came downstairs, put his hand on my arm, and sincerely trying to help, said, "Mommy, I think I may have an idea about how to get the laundry done.  What we should do with the dirty clothes?  If you put the dirty clothes in the dirty clothes washing machine, then they'd get clean."

Oh, my sweet, sweet boy.  These past few weeks it's been the laundry verses your education.  I've chosen education.

So cute!  He'd packed his own bags--full of the perfect outfits and pj's and Hotwheels--for a family sleepover.