I can feel some of my OCD-ish tendencies slipping away, slowly. I could feel it happen this week when my daughter came home with a button missing on her shoe. She had been with her grandparents all day at a Purim celebration in Marin. She came home with one of the decorative Cinderella buttons missing from her $12.95 dress-up shoes. I was bummed. For a split second, I visualized myself driving from Petaluma to Mill Valley, going to the recreation center where the party was held, and scouring the floor looking for the missing button amongst streamers and trash. I then sighed and thought to myself, “let it go”. My next thought was, “maybe I should buy her another pair?” But then I let that thought go too.

Then yesterday Georgia went into the bathroom and Olivia followed her in to wash her hands before dinner. I heard a loud crash and then the sound of glass breaking as it hit the floor. I ran in there only to see my favorite soap dish shattered into smithereens all over the floor. Olivia was saying, “Sorry mommy, sorry, I was just trying to wash my hands”. I tried hard not to make her feel bad, but I still uttered out, “Man, that was my favorite soap dish”.

Not long ago there was a time when I would stop at nothing to find a missing toy or part of a toy. I remember not being able to find one of our blue Nalgene sippy cups and found myself going down to the park with a flashlight at night looking for it. It was one of our most expensive sippy’s ($8 each). Crazy, I know. But after I got out of the car, I shined my light around the park, I found it there sitting on one of the redwood pillars that border the playground.  I used to spend hours looking under the couches and in corners and crevices for the missing puzzle pieces. Now I only look a little bit, typically only doing a weekly sweep under the couch with a flashlight. Sometimes I have found what I was looking for, sometimes I haven’t.

I have a super bionic case on both my iPhone and my iPad “just in case” and I fear that one day I may hear a “splash!” so I am careful not to let my children wander to far with either device or take them into the bathroom with them. I have let go of dings in the hardwood floor, because quite honestly, the adults in the house have caused most of them when we have dropped a frying pan or steak knife. There was also that one time that Brent dragged a bookshelf across it without thinking about the slight scratch it would make.  And while I still hate seeing things get ruined I have come to relax a bit more because with kids, stuff gets broken, ripped, lost, and damaged in some way shape or form.

One of my newest acquisitions is a book called, Sh*t my kids ruined: An A-Z Celebration of Kid-Destruction by Julie Haas Brophy. She also has a blog that basically started this book. The book is a photo gallery from her website of all the messed up things kids have done to their parents’ stuff. This book made me feel so much better about the things in my house that have gotten destroyed at the hands of my little monkeys. I felt gratitude as I scanned through each page and saw that it literally could be a lot worse. I also read this book as a sort of cautionary tale about what to keep up high from my children. Because of it, I’ve learned to keep permanent markers, scissors, paint, glitter, cooking supplies (like cornstarch, flour, and other baking components) out of the reach of little hands. I’ve thought about buying locks for the pantry in general.

Then there are the shots of parent’s who have been inflicted bodily harm by their kids; missing parts of teeth or black and blue eyes from little heads banging into them. My husband has had two black eyes from my older two; we are just waiting on the day when Rocky lives up to her nickname. My all-time favorite image of something that someone’s kids destroyed, is a picture of a woman’s stomach. It’s all stretched out and wrinkly after having two kids. Yep, I wish I could say that I don’t know what that’s like (I’ll spare you the photo).

Dare I say that there are many things I saw in Brophy’s book that have “yet” to have happened to us here. One of the biggest mistakes I made after getting the book was leaving it out on my desk where my four-year-old saw it and put it in with her collection. I panicked because it was like leaving out an instruction manual of destruction. I felt like her little eyes were opened up to the possibilities of what she and her sisters could conjure up or get into. My husband pointed out that perhaps I shouldn’t have left it out in such a low-lying location; so then I quickly hid it in the far reaches of my pantry so they couldn’t find it. I bust it out now and again when something gets broken. After all, as long as what gets broken isn’t a person, I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay after a few deep breaths into a paper bag and some alone time.