I am a crusher of creativity, a destroyer of dreams.

Every single day, my daughters create pages and pages of artwork. And every two or three days, I gather it all up, and fold it up real small, and shove it to the bottom of the recycle bin. And out the door it goes.

I always feel guilty about this, every single time. And yet, if I did not do this, every surface in our house would be covered, covered two or three layers thick, with paintings and drawings and crafts. The sheer volume of creative efforts that come from three little girls in one house is almost impossible to fathom, people.

Our fridge. Sometimes I honestly have problems opening and closing it because of all the priceless artwork attached to it.

It wasn't always this way. I clearly remember the first time I forced Beth to color. She was maybe 9 or 10 months old, and I taped a piece of blank paper to the floor so it wouldn't wiggle around on her, and I shoved a big, fat, orange Crayola into her hand and moved it back and forth across the paper in a wide squiggle. I hoped that she would be entranced by this, that she would get the picture and immediately begin creating on her own, but she didn't. She put up with my little art class for a few minutes and then crawled away, completely uninterested.

Of course this didn't last long. By age 2, Beth was coloring like mad, and her sisters followed suit, and now we have an entire craft section of our closet--a six-drawer plastic cart stuffed with felt and markers and stickers and glitter (oh, how I have come to hate glitter) and googly eyes, and more stuffed-to-the-brim plastic bins stacked on top of the six-drawer cart, and two plastic bins full of coloring books in the kitchen, and three plastic pencil boxes full of crayons on the other shelf in the kitchen, and a little round table in the corner of the kitchen that is always completely covered with works-in-progress. I would guess that each child draws or paints or glues something together at least two times every single day. That's six pieces of paper a day, times seven days per week. It's 35 new pieces of paper every week. At least.

It is madness, I tell you. Pure madness.

I see these ideas for displaying kids' art on magazines and blogs. "Create a revolving art gallery of your children's latest creations," they say. And they have some cute arrangement involving picture frames, or a wire strung along the wall with clothespins for attaching paintings, and it always looks so cute and neat and pretty. Some moms I know save their kids' work in boxes or files, so that one day their kids can look back on all their childhood talent. I've heard of people who take pictures of their kids' creations before throwing them away, so that they can have a digital record of said art--and, even, if they choose, print up all the artwork into a beautiful photo book that will be a family heirloom forever. Genius!

But I'll be honest: I do not rotate the actual art in my actual picture frames on my walls more than once every few years. There is no way I could keep up with my kids. And the digital photo thing? I have not made my actual family photos, the ones that involve my actual children doing actual things, into photo books since 2008. When they ask to see pictures of some thing we did in the past, or they need family photos for a school project, I resort to pulling open the craft drawers, finding some stiff-ish craft paper that will fit into my printer, and printing off pictures from the computer that way. (Because not only have I not created any photo books, I also don't even have any photo paper to print on).

A few years ago I gave my two older girls bulletin boards to hang in their room, with the idea that they could keep their OWN precious artwork on their OWN personal bulletin boards, and that then when they were out of space, they would be the one to make the hard decision to let something go. But the only result seems to be that they keep a few old pictures pinned to the boards, and there are thumbtacks underfoot in their room all the time.

Because here's the thing: they don't want to keep this artwork for themselves. They want to give it to ME. "It's for YOU, mama!" they cry with bright eyes. They write my name on it. They sign it proudly. And they present it to me with the certain knowledge that I will treasure it.

And so I stick it on the fridge, on top of the other 100 pieces of artwork already on there. Or I display it on my desk. Or I leave it out on the table for Daddy to see.

Some of the ones that I do think are exceptionally creative or beautiful or well-executed for their age I stuff into the cupboard where I keep their baby books, with the intention of actually putting it into said baby books one day, so they can look back and see how clever they were. Some of the ones with especially touching messages I stuff into a little box on the dresser in my room so that when I am old and grey I can look back at them and tear up over how sweet and bright and loving my little girls were.

And the rest...I keep it for awhile. And then I wait until they go to bed. And I throw it away. Because I am heartless, and because I fear that my house would collapse under the accumulated weight of craftiness if I didn't do something about it. Or we'd get featured on "Hoarders."

I bet Picasso's mom didn't have to worry about getting featured on "Hoarders."

Ok, here's a correction to an earlier post: I was worried about one thing with Lucy starting school. I was worried about how she would get along with her sister.

My oldest daughter is a very social kid. She has a lot of friends, and she loves to play with all of them. My second-born is quieter--more inclined to stick with a particular friend or two. She was starting kindergarten in a school where she knew no one, and I knew that come recess-time, she'd be looking to her big sister for guidance and playmate. I was afraid that, in turn, my oldest would want no part of the little kindergartener tagging along behind her, and that hurt feelings would result all around.

I talked with Beth about this. I told her that it would be very nice of her if she would play with Lucy, show her around, and help her make friends. I didn't want to burden her, or make her into a babysitter, so I told her that after awhile I was sure Lucy would make her own friends and feel more comfortable--but that maybe for the first few days at least, they could play together at recess.

Flash forward a month, and it's mid-October and I'm heading home after a PTC meeting. I'm walking across the playground just as I see Beth's class come out for recess. I stop, waiting for Beth to spot me, but she doesn't go to the playground with the rest of the second and third graders. Instead, she stops and turns to face the door, just standing still and staring at it.

Instantly, my mother-heart is wondering. What happened? Does she not feel good? Is she sad about something? Did she have a fight with her friends?

I step up behind her and give her a hug, and once she's recovered from her rapture at seeing me at school during the day, I ask her: "Why aren't you playing with your friends?"

She looks at me like I'm dumb. "I'm waiting for Lucy's class to come out."

"Oh! Well, you know, it is okay to play with other people sometimes," I tell her. "Maybe she has other kindergarteners she wants to play with too."

Again with the don't-you-get-it? look. "But I just like to play with Lucy all the time!"

And then Lucy's class came out, and I hugged them both, and they ran off to play. Together.

This probably won't last. I am fully prepared to see my girls at each others' throats throughout portions of their lives. In fact, I witness the tears and the rage and the fussing at each other daily. But right now? They're actually friends.

I had my girls 22 and 24 months apart on purpose--because I wanted them to be friends. Playmates. Companions. Yes, having daughters who were 4 years old and 2 years old and newborn was very, very challenging at the time. But now I feel like rubbing my hands together in glee. It's working!

When I see them walk to school side by side, blonde ponytails bobbing and pink backpacks bouncing, identical from behind except for the few inches of height Beth's got on Lucy, I can't help but smile. When Lucy tells me about her day and says, "And I saw Beth in the hallway and we hugged," it melts my heart.

Evie's in on it too, at home. Three kids playing together does have a different dynamic than just two, and there are all kinds of sisterly schisms, loyalties and allegiances that shift daily. But oftentimes, they run in a pack. A trio. People see them and say, "Look! It's the Rouse Girls!" as though they are their own entity. Together, they create a unit that's bigger than each of their three single selves. A cord of three strands, one that is not easily broken.



Here's to the Rouse Girls. Long may they rule the playground--together.

Yesterday I cleaned out my cat's water dish, which had been contaminated with little bits of kitty kibble from small over-enthusiastic cat feeders who can't dump a scoop of food without getting it everywhere. So the water looked gross anyway.

But then I dumped the gross water/mushy kibble down the garbage disposal, and when I did so, a truly horrifying, large, and fuzzy spider slid out of the dish as well. Even my fearless husband said it was disturbing.

It was, thank goodness, drowned. But I want to know what in the world a thing that big was doing in my house in the first place, and second of all, why it was in the water dish. Was it going after the mushy cat food? Do we now have spiders that eat cat food in my house? Why won't the spiders just leave me alone?

If I start finding kitten-size spiders around here, I am MOVING OUT.

Life moves pretty fast. And right now I feel like mine is speeding up.

I am stunned by how life keeps on changing every time I turn around.

I feel like I just got the hang of this stay-at-home mom thing. I was at peace with spending my days puttering around the house, baking bread and soothing toddlers and reading stories. I was never alone, but I had no one to answer to but myself, either. And what I found so difficult to adjust to at first--the lack of any sort of external structure in my day--I was coming to cherish. Having complete freedom to do whatever seemed best to meet my own and my family's needs? That, my friend, is a rare privilege.

And now, stay-at-home mom really doesn't describe my life anymore. As my kids have gotten older, other things have been beckoning, so that I now have part-time work and free-lance work and volunteer work. I don't have any single formal position that I have to report to every day; instead, I have a patchwork of responsibilities I've willingly taken on that have me here and there and everywhere. I used to get so tired of being at home all the time. I used to make up reasons to take the kids places. Now, when I have a day in which I actually don't have any appointments or meetings or deadlines, I find myself rejoicing in the bliss of a day when I get to stay home and clean the house.

Whereas my most important tasks of the day used to be lactating and gestating, and every day looked very much the same as the one before it, now each day is has its own different set of places to be and things to do, depending on which hat I'm wearing at the time.

It's one more way my youngest is getting a different upbringing from my oldest. When Beth was three, I had a one-year-old and I was pregnant. I wasn't part of any mommy groups, I did writing and editing work but it was all from home, the kids weren't in any schools or sports, and the only regular thing on my schedule was storytime at the library on Tuesday mornings. Naptime was rigidly and daily enforced. I could make home-made pasta for dinner on a whim, because I had nothing but time.

Now that Evie is three, I've got kids on three different school schedules. We have gymnastics and piano lessons and I've got a variety of work and personal commitments. Today I'm giving Evie a nap for the first time all week. We just don't really have time on the other days. I'm looking up crockpot cookbooks and "on the table in 30 minutes" recipes, because I don't have time to spend hours at the counter anymore.

I'm not whining about my overly-busy life. My life is as busy as I choose to let it be, just like everyone else's.  Everything I do, I've said yes to for a reason. I'm just blown away by how quickly I've come full circle. Just a few years ago I was wondering how I'd ever adjust to my new life...and now, just when I was getting good at it, things have gone and changed again.

The years may have been short, but my days did go slowly by...and now the days are passing at warp speed too. Can someone please tell me the trick to pressing the pause button once in awhile? I think I need that.