I'm pretty sure I've lost my mind.

How do I know this?

The other day I found three cartons of unopened cottage cheese in my fridge. The following day I bought one more.

I've spent the last two months trying to bring order to my life, but gave up today after realizing that I can't even organize my purse.

I told Adam this the other day when he came home and found me mumbling to myself.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I can't seem to get a grip on reality."

"It's completely understandable. Look at all the kids we have. You can't expect to care for all of them and come away unscathed."

"But that's the problem," I said as I picked spit-wads off the laundry room door. "I don't think they all belong to us."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well," I motioned toward the odd looking boy in the living room, "I grew suspicious today when I saw him licking our plunger. It took some digging, but sure enough, I found three birth certificates."

"And your point is?"

"My point is that we have three more kids than we have birth certificates!"

"How did this happen?"

"I don't know" I said, as I cleaned up a smashed yogurt tube, three chewed blueberries, an open faced peanut butter and jelly sandwich and nine foam darts from underneath the kitchen table. "But what concerns me most is that I can't tell you with absolute certainty which three are ours."

As I crawled out from underneath the table, a boy, whose underwear I have been washing since June 10th, came running down the stairs, jumped the last seven and landed with such force that three pictures fell off the wall.

"Son," Adam said, "if you jump off those stairs one more time, you will be grounded!"

Not wanting to embarrass him, I leaned in and whispered quietly in his ear, "Uh, Adam...I could be wrong, but I don't think he's one of ours."

He looked at me and said, "I think I've lost my mind."

See what I mean?

A funny thing happens when my child wants to earn money: He’ll do almost anything to get it.

After mowing our lawn, cleaning the bathroom and taking out the garbage, Isaiah realized he was still short on the money needed to buy his newest obsession: Beyblades.

“I still need a few more dollars, Mom. What else can I do?”

I racked my brain for a minute as I tried to figure out what other tedious chores I could get him to agree to, when it occurred to me that there was a fresh load of whites still in the dryer waiting to be folded.

It took him four armloads but he finally got the clothes to the couch, where he preceded to comment on his inability to fold such a huge amount of clothes. Suddenly he stopped short…

“Mom, do I have to fold your underwear?”

“I have to fold yours, don’t I?”

“Yeah but…ugh, this is worse than I thought.”

30 minutes later, as he was still bending over the couch folding the whites, Isaiah said, “I think you should owe me more money for folding all these clothes. It’s a lot, and my back is starting to hurt.”

“You’re almost done, just work through the pain.”

He finished folding the whites, and was getting ready to collect his money when he noticed 5 socks still sitting on the couch. As he sorted through them, looking under the couch and throw pillows for their matches, I could see the confusion set in.

“Where?...How?...This doesn’t make any sense. I can’t find the matches to these socks anywhere!”

I cackled. Isaiah didn’t appreciate it of course, but there was something so freeing about finally being understood by my children, that I couldn’t help myself.

A few days later Isaiah came running in the kitchen with two crumpled up socks in his hands. “You’ll never believe where I found these two socks!

I knew this was going to be good. “Where?”

“I found one on top of the ceiling fan, and another in the downspout on the side of the house. Isn’t that strange?”

I put my arm around his shoulder and leaned close.

“No son, finding the matches to those socks in a single load of laundry would be strange. That you found them in the downspout and on the ceiling fan makes perfect sense to me.”