Some days...

Here's a little visual metaphor for my life.  I will give you three guesses as to what is happening in the picture above:

a. The dog is enjoying a little snooze after industriously helping me clean the house all morning.

b. Once I launder my clothes, I like to throw them on the floor.  The dog doesn't understand this, but he isn't going to let it keep him up all night.

c. The dog thought that despite having five feet of clear sofa real estate, he really wanted to take a nap right where the freshly laundered clothes were folded and stacked.  He gently removed them to the floor and is sleeping the snooze of the innocent.

Some days (in fact, many days), doesn't it just feel like one step forward, two steps back?  Or is that just me, with an active five-year-old boy and a dog who, eight years in, still hasn't outgrown his puppy stage?

While I was writing this entry, in fact, my son accidentally wrote on my blouse with black pen, and my dog somehow got gum stuck on his paw.  As I type, I can track his whereabouts by a progression of dull "thwacks" as the gum sticks to and unsticks from the carpet he's pacing.

Many have told me that it gets better, but I am suspicious of this platitude.  Maybe it does get better, but sometimes those years seem a long way out.  In the meantime I'll probably just do what I always do: pick up the mess, scold the guilty party, then give him a little kiss on the forehead.  This response I know is a mixed message, if not actually positive reinforcement of a negative behavior, but I have a feeling that when those "better" years get here, I will look back and be a little nostalgic for the messiness and unpredictability of today.