A Herd of Elephants

File this one under the "becoming my mother" heading.

I don't think I truly understood all my mother was telling me until years after I became a mother. Case in point:

Mom told us, on more than one occasion, that we sounded like a herd of elephants. Being the literal being that all children are, I just knew there was no possible way we could sound like a herd of elephants. We just didn't make that much noise.

Uh-huh.

So I was downstairs this morning, rocking the baby back to sleep. If she gets up too early in the morning, it will throw off our whole day. This was after the teenagers were up and moving. The rocker is in the family room, which is directly below the kitchen & dining room. And I could hear EVERYTHING down there.

Chairs scraping across the floor.
Footsteps to the fridge.
Thundering steps down the stairs to the storage room.
An echo of those same steps returning upstairs
Rattling of the frozen breakfast sandwich wrapper (they got their own breakfast this morning)
Footsteps across the floor, both directions
Water running
Microwave slamming closed
Microwave beeping and running
Microwave slamming closed again
More chairs scraping
More steps across the floor
Fridge again
Pantry door closing
Cold cereal hitting the bowl
Clanging silverware
Dishes landing in the sink
More steps across the floor

(There was more, but you get the picture.)

And as I sat belowstairs, I looked up at the ceiling and became my mother, as I thought, "They sound like a herd of elephants up there!"