Friday, August 22, 2014

Fact: You don't realize you have OCD until you have kids

I never considered myself a person with OCD.  I believe in good karma, I'm a tad superstitious (yes I still need to kiss my hand and touch the ceiling when I go through a yellow light) and I do like an organized house (even though that has completely gone out the window with kids).  What I wasn't planning on is how much it would hurt my soul and make me turn into an OCD freak when my kids do the following:

1.)  Deviate from their side of the coloring book and scribble all over my BEAUTIFULLY perfected Princess Ariel drawing.
2.)  Make me cringe when not only do their socks not match, but one is a ankle length and the other knee-high.
3.)  When they reorganize all of the folders on my iPad.  They are in their perfect categories, let them be!
4.)  When they fast-forward through the best song of the movie or song.  Hey, I wanted to listen to that!
5.)  When they pull all of my clothes off my hangars in my closet.  Or their closet.  Or the coat closet.
6.)  When they mix decks of cards...keep UNO in its own box, not in the Crazy 8s box people.
7.)  Mixing up the art supplies.  It seems whenever I organize all of the little pieces, crayons, markers, glue, glitter, jiggly eyes, pipe cleaners and buttons all in their appropriate areas, they all end up together again.
8.)  Keeping your hair in the ponytail/clip/braid I put it in.  Just. Leave. It. Alone.
9.)  Move or take MY stuff.  Not much is MINE anymore, the kids have completely taken over the house.  The few things that are mine are my makeup, my hair stuff, my chapstick and my lotion.  And every day or night when I go to the specific drawers or place on the counter to find these things, half the time they have been shoplifted and taken to another room completely or just MIA.
10.)  Hand washing.  Now that doesn't mean your typical OCD where I have the need to wash my hands several times, I'm talking about them not washing their hands at all or not good enough.  Olivia has been washing her hands since she was a baby, yet it's a foreign concept to her still at 5 (and every time she steps up to the sink) that she needs to 1. Wet them 2. Put the soap on 3. Rub together until lathered and 4. Rinse.
11.)  Never make it through the end of a game or puzzle on the iPad.  I get satisfaction and closure out of finishing what I started, but kids will sometimes quit right away, halfway through or almost at the end.  It hurts me when that last puzzle piece with Mickey's ear is not secured into place before the app is shut down.
12.)  Crash my dreams of a beautiful Duplo creation.  My castle was organized with colors and blocks all fitting perfectly together...I worked so hard...and then BOOM, it comes crashing down by a 2-year-old Godzilla.
13.)  Reading books with a two-year-old.  They never let you finish a page and it makes you feel like you're not getting closure because you don't know what happened to Horton on that next page.  Did he really hear the Who?
14.)  Ruin my organization.  I tend to [try to] organize everything in a way that makes it not just look like I halfheartedly cleaned when people come over, but so things are easy to grab and see, especially in a morning rush or during a bedtime meltdown.  No matter how many times I organize the pantry so snack foods are easily within reach or organize the cups in the cupboard so the straws have quick access (because you know, every freaking lid and straw is different), by the next day, it's gone to complete shit.  With two little ones at home you don't often have your ENTIRE house clean at once, so the little victories like reorganizing one shelf of the pantry or one shelf of a cupboard are huge for me.
15.)  Dirty a clean floor.  So cliché right? We have dark floors and it works all throughout the house just fine except the kitchen.  Every food and footprint shows up and within minutes of cleaning it looks like we just had a party.  I hate dirty floors.  Hate them.  I walk on them barefoot and hate getting cheerios stuck to the bottom of them only to crunch into billions of pieces with my next step.  But it's absolutely inevitable that they cannot keep it clean for more than 15 minutes.
16.)  Not wearing a matching outfit.  My internal self cringes, but the mom in me who wants them to be whoever they want to be doesn't say a thing.  Although it is sad that the cute matching Gap shirt and skirt will never be worn together in the same sitting...
17.)  Interrupting me while I'm singing to a song in the car.  Wait...that's my favorite part, stop asking me questions!
18.)  Take a clean iPad screen and turn it into a crusted, smeared, foggy mess.  I seriously cannot clean it with enough Wet Ones to get it clean after a day in the hands of these kids.
19.)  Take my food.  Practically out of my mouth.  I'm a sharing kind of girl.  I think especially if you go somewhere new it's awesome to share food because then everyone gets a taste of something different.  I however do not like little fingers in my rice, on my plate and practically taking my chicken off my fork.  It was cute when they were littler, but now, I'm just hungry, so eat your own food and stop touching mine.
20.)  Never letting me finish a task.  Just like the puzzles or games, I get satisfaction out of completion.  For example, sitting down to edit an entire photo session and actually accomplishing that.  I have to do everything as time allows so sometimes that means it takes me 3 or 4 tries to finish something.  It drives me nuts to have all of these unfinished tasks hanging over my head and I'm not able to actually complete them!

Ok, so maybe I'm a little OCD and didn't realize it until now.  It's growth for me as a person as these kids are teaching me invaluable lessons about not being perfect, but the OCD-er in me certainly struggles at times.

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