Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie

The day my first son was born, I was sitting in my hospital bed blissfully staring at the tiny wonder that was my new baby when my husband returned to our room from dinner. All smiles.

“Guess what? Mom and Dad wanna go to our house and clean it for us while we’re here in the hospital. Cool, huh?”

He had reason to be excited. He hadn’t lived in a clean house for months. I was wiped out and tired and downright lazy during my entire pregnancy with Jack – which I laugh about now – having recently been pregnant while simultaneously chasing two toddler boys all over tarnation.

But, my house was a mess. There were piles of dirty laundry all over the place, dirty bathrooms, and dirty dishes filling the sink.

The place was embarrassingly messy. Okay, dirty. It was dirty.

I broke out in a post-baby hormonal sweat at even the thought of my mother-in-law seeing week-old dirty dishes filling up the sink. And, the laundry. Oh, the laundry situation. When I outgrew my regular clothes, I just threw them into a pile on the laundry room floor. And, then did the same as I outgrew my maternity clothes. And, never thought about them again.

Because, you know, I had so much else to do since I stopped working at 20 weeks.

But, the thought of going home to a clean house. How totally awesome would that be?

The thought of a clean house went fifteen rounds with my pride. And, the clean house won by a slim, slim margin. So, I agreed.

I walked into my house four days later, carrying my new baby boy, and the place sparkled. The kitchen floor, the bathrooms – everything was clean. I had forgotten what vacuumed carpet looked like. And, to not have to rinse a clean spoon to have a bowl of cereal? It was simply delightful.

My husband's family came over shortly after we got home to welcome us and our baby boy home. We all oohed and aahed over the little guy for a few hours, and I finally excused myself to take him upstairs to our bedroom to nurse him.

As soon as I climbed onto our bed, I noticed that there were five laundry baskets sitting in the corner of our room - full of clean, folded laundry.

Not only was our entire house sparkly, but all of our laundry was clean. I was having my own little celebration...

Then, I spotted it.

Sitting atop a neatly folded pile of my laundry was a metallic silver thong.

I sat and stared at that basket for several minutes – totally paralyzed.

I was MOR-TI-FIED. It had surely come from that massive, renegade pile of I haven’t worn this since I started showing laundry that had overtaken our laundry room. But there it was. In all of its itsy bitsy glory.

I could just see it. My mother-in-law folding our laundry and having visions of me scandalously sashaying around the house – nine months pregnant – in nothing but that teenie, weenie pair of metallic silver underoos.

I finished stalling nursing Jack and reluctantly returned downstairs. Everyone was getting ready to leave, and despite my utter embarrassment, I knew I had to graciously thank my husband's mom for loving us so selflessly.

I bravely looked at my mother-in-law and said, “Thank you so much for cleaning our house and doing our laundry. We feel so very loved.”

Mom quickly replied, “Don’t just thank me. Dad did all the laundry.”