>No Longer Members of the Clean Kids Club

A few years ago, I never left home without making sure Punky was impeccably dressed, her hair combed to shining, her bows tied firmly in place. I was a stay-at-home mom, you see, and her appearance was a reflection of how well I was doing at my job. Ahem!

These days, though, I’m no longer branding myself as a rookie. Punky still most often wears dresses (they’re easier, after all, to find and put over her head than those complicated shorts and t-shirt outfits) and she generally has a bow in her hair, but the dress often is decorated with chocolate or grass stains and her mouth rimmed in blue from a lollipop, or covered with crumbs from a peanut butter cracker.

Bruiser is even worse; the kid manages to get filthy, sticky dirty within 30 minutes of taking a bath; I’ve simply given up where he’s concerned. I may once have believed that scrubbed and shining children said to the world, “I have a most excellent mother,” but now I believe it says nothing more than, “My mother has no life.”

After all, kids are by nature filthy little creatures. Give my sweet angels an hour left to their own devices and you can bet they will be covered in chocolate milk, Goldfish remnants, jam, paint, and whatever else they could find. I’ve decided after extensive observation, therefore, that it’s absolutely unnatural for small children to be clean.

Besides, having two older girls has taught me that it all evens out when puberty strikes- at that point, your children will feel compelled to take many, many, many hot, steamy one-hour-long, showers in order to make up for all the days they skipped bath time as children.

And so with that, I am done. Done! I will no longer stress out about how clean my kids are. Before we go somewhere, I will simply give their faces, hands and feet a once-over with a few (dozen) wet wipes and we will be good to go!

Of course, at some point, I do have to draw the line. Yesterday, for example, I took off Bruiser’s diaper while he was standing in the den and several bits of food fell out. He reached down to pick them up and eat them and was sorely disappointed when I prohibited that impromptu snack.

As every mom knows, there’s dirty and then there’s just gross.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.