Do any of you have kids who barf their belongings all over the place?  I have one who does.  I always know where she’s been or where she’s going in the house.  She’s kind of like Hansel and Gretel who left their trail of breadcrumbs to follow….all I have to do is follow the trail of destruction and BAM, there she is!

She walks in the house after school and plops her back pack in the middle of the kitchen. She pulls out her homework and spreads it out all over the counter ~ taking up the entire surface.  When her homework is finished, she kicks off her shoes under the counter and heads off in search of a snack.  The remnants of her snack are evident on the counters.  I know exactly what she has eaten and how much.  A banana peel, a knife, a smear of peanut butter or a Luna bar wrapper lying on the counter or a box of cereal and a bowl tells me exactly what kind of snack she chose.

As she makes her way out of the kitchen and into the rest of the house, I can trace her every move.  A hairband in the TV room means she was tired of her pony tail.  Socks strewn on the floor tell me that her feet got hot and she’s barefoot.  I walk up the stairs to see clothes littering both her bathroom and her bedroom floor.  I can tell, from what I see on the floor, exactly what day it is…a dance day or a swim day.  If the bathing suits are out, I know it’s swim.  The leotards are a giveaway for her dance days.  I don’t think a career in espionage or counter-intelligence is in her future, the enemy will track her in the blink of an eye.

She barfs belongings as she goes….

Coming back down into the kitchen is yet another indicator of her daily activities…her dance or swim bag is propped up against her school backpack.  Both usually are open and have contents strewn about the floor surrounding her bags.  Her choice of footwear is on the floor beside

As I sit here right now, I notice a headband from her dance bag and her competition dance jacket lying on the floor.  A friend of hers joined her here after school so now I’m combating two sets of everything.  Two sets of barfed belongings are strewn about my kitchen at this very minute.

Sometimes I just get so tired of the constant nagging and harping that I turn a blind eye.  I know I shouldn’t but it gets so exhausting to be on her case constantly.  Her barfing is so pervasive that it invades nearly every nook and cranny of the house.  The barf sometimes even threatens to encroach on our room.  There are days she watches TV in our room, kicking off her shoes on my side of the bed where they are “lost.”  She can’t see them so she can’t find them.  She is good at overlooking lots and lots of her things and they remain forever out of place.  I am a person who likes to have a place for everything (OK, so it doesn’t always happen that way but it’s a rich fantasy of mine).  It’s a lost battle with her and I don’t know how to win.  The nagging and harping aren’t working.

I am hoping this battle is not lost forever.  I am hoping the barfing of belongings will come to an end at some point.  Maybe someday she will see the value in making sure to put things back where they belong so she always knows where they are.  But I don’t hold out much hope.  She comes by it as honestly as Lucas comes by his ADHD.  She doesn’t fall far from the one who just plops things wherever and then has to scramble to look for his keys or his wallet or whatever else he may have put someplace for the time being.  Although, I have to say he has gotten marginally better in the past 19 years of marriage.  So maybe there is hope for her yet.  There is a small glimmer of hope that she can go from being the Barf-Meister (or Miss) to someone who enjoys a tidy house sans barfed belongings.

Oh, for the love of my children….