There are evenings when I can't see my living room floor. It's winter. It's below zero. I cannot bear to watch another episode of Elmo, so I let the kids do whatever keeps them happy. It is not unusual for the couch cushions to be strewn across the floor. Gabe either pretends they are part of his pirate ship or uses them for his "exercises." (This mainly involves lots of jumping and spinning.) Ada just thinks they're fun to crawl on. Some nights, we build towers out of the cushions or make them into a tunnel. I think we've problaby decreased the live expectancy of our couch with all this rough-housing ...

Add in a few dozen toys, blankets, pillows, trains, beads, a lone clothes basket with unfolded clothes and whatever else the kids have dragged into the living room, and you can picture our house. Al says the kids live on the floor, and that's the truth. I can't tell you how many times I've walked into the living room and heard the loud crunch of a Lucky Charm cereal under my heel.

Which brings me to another point ... my carpeting. Beige carpet is a bad, bad idea if you have toddlers ...