'Is anyone out there?'� I screamed from the bathroom to my three kids. No answer. It figures that the first moment of silence I've gotten in three days is when I'm sitting on the pot, pants around my ankles, needing a roll of toilet paper. Then I hear snickering and little feet shuffling on the kitchen linoleum. 'I'm not going to be in this bathroom forever, and when I get out, you're going to pay!'� I threaten. My oldest kids, teen twins, laugh outright. My threats don't scare them anymore.
I pivot on the toilet and throw open the bathroom door. I lost all modesty with my legs split open to the world on a hospital delivery table. Every moment since then has only acted to reinforce my lack of privacy. As I strain my neck to try and stare down the hallway and make some kind of eye contact. I see a flash of blond curls run past the door. 'Meredith!'� I scream. The three-year-old freezes and drops the bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips she rifled from the pantry, no doubt under the urging of her older brothers. She stops only long enough to realize I'm not coming after her and then runs as fast as her pudgy legs can carry her to the safety of the tent her brothers fashioned from my good sheets and the living room furniture.
The next few minutes are filled with laughter from the living room. I hear the rustling of plastic and figure one of the boys must have gotten the chocolate themselves. Deciding to enjoy privacy when I can get it, I shut the door and grab last month's issue of Shape out of the magazine bin in the floor. I hadn't had a chance to read it, let alone try the exercises. I'm not even sure the three rolls around my midsection would allow me to squat low enough to shape my legs and firm my butt. Three rolls for three kids seem appropriate to me. Just as I flip to the section containing low calorie chicken delights I hear a shriek from beyond the bathroom.
'Mom! Meredith stinks!'� 'Gross!'� Ahhhh, sweet justice. I think and then scream back, 'I'm still in the bathroom.'� After a flurry of footsteps and a slamming closet door, toilet paper flies through the open door and hits the wall with a thud. Tyler had managed to throw the toilet paper like a football causing it to unroll and leave a trail from my bedroom door to the wall. I sigh and place the magazine back in the bin, condemning it to another month of gathering dust until it is replaced by a new issue and thrown into the recycle bin. Ignoring the pleading of my sons to change their sister, I clean up the toilet paper trail and use the excess to dust my vanity. As I flush my makeshift dust rag, my husband's voice chastises me about wasting water and protecting the environment. I grimace; annoyed that he can get to me without even being in the house.
I walk into the living room and survey the damage done during my twenty-minute bathroom hiatus. Ripped open and exploded into a five-foot wide circle in the middle of the floor was the bag of chocolate morsels. Meredith was sitting among the chocolates, shoving them in as fast as she could chew. Not only was she due for a change, but now she needed a bath. Turned upside down and used as a shield from flying couch cushions was the leather recliner I had saved for seven months to buy. Crushed and wrinkled on the ground under the weight of two wrestling 13-year-old boys was the once makeshift tent. As I looked closer, I saw the outline of muddy footprints going through the middle of the sheets. Flicking my eyes quickly around the room, I saw the culprit of the prints. Tanner had tossed his set of rain boots into the far corner of the room; they were leaking water onto my once clean carpet.
The silence from earlier must have been because the kids were taking advantage of my bathroom break for a short trip outside in the rain. 'Line it up,'� I bellow, drawing from my husband's military training. Familiar with the drill, the kids get in a straight line in the middle of the room obviously amused with their antics. The boys stand still, but Meredith sees the formation as an excuse to do headstands in the middle of the floor. Biting back a smile I ask, 'Have you three lost your bearing? What would your father say?'� Their smiles vanish. Meredith falls back on her butt and sits stunned trying to decide whether or not going to cry. I catch a whiff of her diaper and frown. 'Boys, clean up while I change Stinky.'� They giggle and begin running around picking up stray toys. 'Sheets in the dirty clothes,'� I yell as I head to Meredith's room. 'Dad gets home in thirty minutes.'�
I walk into Meredith's room, which used to be my old walk-in closet. Daniel and I remodeled our house when the twins were five. He got a weight room; I got the big closet. Meredith was an unexpected surprise, and we hadn't planned for another baby room during the remodel. We figured that since none of my clothes fit anyway, we tossed them out and put in a crib and changing table. Meredith's room will be the closet until she gets old enough to need something bigger. Luckily, I still had boxes of clothes and furniture from the twins. A few small, pink baby shower presents are distributed through the house, but other than those Meredith's life is completely hand-me-down from her crib to her clothes. It made for a relatively inexpensive third child, who sometimes gets mistaken for a boy.
I threw the diaper into the diaper genie, thankful that I splurged on at least one new appliance. I decided not to clean her butt, and instead headed into the bathroom and ran some water into the tub. Out of the living room came the sounds of furniture banging into walls and toys shooting across the room into the toy box like a NBA championship game. I washed Meredith more quickly knowing that the boys were doing less cleaning than playing.
Carrying Meredith on my hip, I walk towards the living room. In one corner is a pile of dirty sheets and wet clothes that had been hiding somewhere before. 'Those better make it to the laundry room,'� I say sitting Meredith on the worn, brown carpet in front of the television and turn on SpongeBob Squarepants. She has no idea what it's about, but stares at the bright colors flashing across the screen for at least thirty minutes before she gets bored and starts looking for something else to do. The living room is navigational, and I figure I will start dinner before doing my own cleaning sweep.
Working women that manage to cook their families homemade meals and keep a clean house amaze me. I'm a stay at home mom, and tonight my family is eating frozen pizza and tater tots. If we're lucky, Daniel will buy a gallon of ice cream on the way home. He probably won't, because he usually doesn't think of things ahead of time. So instead of ice cream, we'll skip desert tonight and sit down as a family and watch Stewart Little. Meredith will fall asleep while her father holds her and then will be tucked in. The boys will head to bed at nine o'clock leaving me and with Daniel some much needed alone time. We snuggle under the covers and I say 'I love you, Honey.'� I get no response and then hear a soft snore. Oh, I love the life of a stay at home mom.

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