Glamourous Motherhood

Our house is in such a state of disaster I could laugh. . .if I lived next-door. Since it's mine to clean, I'm pretty dejected. Although I certainly can't blame Henry for the entire mess, I can explain away most of it with the trite observation that one year olds are remarkably destructive. I'm packing for an adults only vacation we've been planning for months. (Up until 6 am today, I have been excited about this vay-cay: fantasizing about sleeping late, taking naps, soaking up rays, getting tipsy on tropical drinks, reading Stephanie Meyer books without guilt; but when I woke up this morning I began to dread leaving our separation-anxiety ridden cutie, missing his drooly face, feeling guilty for leaving Tripp's mom alone for four nights with a teething one year old, and feeling overall kind of terrible. I can't win. ) Anyway, I started packing today. When I realized I hadn't heard the cacophony of xylophones and the slurred singing of various battery-depleted stuffed animals in a while, I decided a responsible mother would probably try to find her child. And since I'm TRYING to be a responsible mother, I picked myself up from the middle of a pile of bathing suits and mismatched socks to go find him. During the 300 square feet I walked until I found Henry splashing happily in toilet water, I discovered he had unrolled two toilet paper rolls (he creatively decided to tear one entire roll into tiny pieces and place them in the tub and traced the other roll through the house Hansel and Gretel style); he also emptied his sock drawer and melded it with the contents of his upended hamper, dumped Lucy's food bowls, transplanted the toilet plunger from the bathroom to the kitchen table, and knocked down the ironing board (we've learned enough to put the iron on a HIGH shelf). This is on top of the discovery that the lemon body spray I'd been looking forward to wearing on this trip had exploded (?!), several loads of brightly colored laundry appear to have been bleached (although we haven't used bleach in weeks--the latest in a string of washing machine-related conspiracies), and the discovery that my post-pregnancy feet no longer fit into the cute, impractical shoes I'd been planning to wear on our trip.
The never-ending, hamster-wheel feel of cleaning, feeding, and entertaining (repeat infinity times) that is mommy life sometimes leaves me feeling brain-dead and asking the existential question, "What is the point?" But as I was typing this Henry ran up to the computer, threw his hands in the air (in other words, "Pick me the hell up!"--on another note, Henry doesn't speak. At all. Not a word. A few weeks ago, I heard a kid his age say "teeth" and point to the appropriate body part on a giant plastic alligator. What's up with this?), jumped in my lap, bit my head (I'm convinced this is his attempt to kiss me) and squealed with delight. Sigh. This will be you soon, all my pregnant friends. It's not glamorous. But it's pretty awesome.