As if reading my mind while I was writing this post on Wed., one of my very favorite bloggers, CMR‘s Matt Archibold, wrote this lovely post for the Register about a day in the life of a father of five (considered a “large” family by today’s standards):

My wife is the Charlie Brown of banana pickers. She always picks the sorriest looking bananas. I don’t know if she feels sorry for them or there’s something she just doesn’t understand about bananas but she always picks the craziest looking bananas.

I offered my five year old son a banana this morning when he came downstairs to get ready for school. It was the last one. And there was a reason it was the last one. It looked like every other banana’s great grandfather. I’d tried giving it to the three year old a few minutes earlier and she backed away all wide eyed with her hands up to fend me off like I was brandishing a weapon. I didn’t want the banana to go to waste so when my five year old came down the stairs I practically jumped on him.

“Here’s your banana” I told him as he was approaching the pop tarts.

“No way,” he said, as if he’d prepared for me.

I insisted it was fine but he said it looked “crazy.”

It’s not “crazy” I assured him and unpeeled it, showing a perfectly fine banana. He took an intrigued step forward and then looked at me to make sure that I wasn’t playing a trick on him.

“OK,” he reluctantly said and took the banana.

Read on as he illustrates how, like some bananas, family life often looks a little crazy (even rotten) on the outside, but inside it’s still ripe and sweet.