Chores after Kids

I am going to let you in on a little secret of mine that I am willing to share on the off chance it might help another mom, even if it does make me look completely selfish. So it's no secret I hated cleaning and doing chores before having kids so you can only imagine how much worse that has gotten since having them. However, after a while, a light bulb went on and I realized something- if I volunteered to do the chore, then that meant I wasn't the one having to take responsibility for the kids. Dishwasher needs emptying, oh sure, I'll do it (while you chase child #2 around the house just to change her diaper and get her in her pajamas). The recycling needs to be taken out, yes, let me get right on that (while child #1 wants to be read the same book for the 105th time). We ran out of toilet paper? oh, let me run right up to Walgreens to get some more (while child #1 and child #2 jump on each other on the bed and then both fall off, smack their heads together and are screaming for you at the same time). See how this works? It's great. But the best of it all has to do with the road trip. Before kids, I used to hate to be the one to drive. If you are driving, you can't sleep, read, look at Facebook, etc (well some people might do those things anyway, but I hear you are not supposed to). If you are the passenger, you control the music, you can read your trashy magazines and you can drift off into sleep whenever you want to. Now, after kids, I will gladly drive all 10 hours of a road trip for one reason: I don't have to be the manager of the children. See now the passenger has to dole out snacks, change DVDs, find lovies that fell onto the floor, read books to, etc (the list could go on forever) while the driver sits there with his/her headphones in and just drives. With no other worries in the world. It's pure bliss to be the driver. So for all the moms out there- remember, chores are actually your friends. You should volunteer to do them more often (or at least whenever you need a break)!!