It’s amazing how much we parents tolerate in the name of love. Poopy diapers and cranky afternoons are the least of it; my personal least favorite is the act of cleaning up the various messes that L leaves throughout the day.

Normally, I share these duties with my wonderful wife. Considering that she left this evening for four days in New York, all of the clean-up duties fall on me until Saturday.

Tonight’s tidying was epic. Like, I think just about ALL of the baby’s toys and books were strewn across the house. In all, the process took me nearly 45 minutes after I got the girl to sleep. By the time I finished, I was, quite literally, in desperate need of an hour of mindless television and a giant glass of wine.

Organizing her blocks was perhaps the most daunting task, since she had a) mixed four different kinds of blocks together and b) hidden a number of the blocks in various places around the kitchen.

A close second: cleaning up the pile of letter magnets, which (of course) she left in front of the metal file cabinet in my office.

There was the pile that I like to call the Stuffed Animal Gyre, which, of course, needed to be removed from the center of her room so I could actually walk in the room to put her into her crib.

Finally: The tomatoes she picked from our garden and left on the stoop in a heaping mess.

Don’t get me wrong, here, folks. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that caring for these little critters requires us parents to do a bunch of stuff I doubt we’d do if we weren’t, well, caring for our little critters. Tomorrow, I clean as we go. Maybe, just maybe, that will make a difference at the end of the day (though probably not).