Lazy Mommy and The Car That's Always There

I am not a messy person. I like things clean and neat. I like the house to smell clean and I hate the toilet seat left up. I clean at least one of my toilets every day (I have a lot of toilets and a lot of boys to.. well... do what boys do.) My bed is only unmade if I am in it and I make my boys make theirs as well. I sweep my kitchen after lunch and dinner every day and even spent all last Saturday washing the entire ground floor windows of my house using a squeegee and a huge, shaky ladder and a very *helpful* 4 year old climbing up behind me.

That said, I am not a neat freak. I don't mop every day and sometimes I just can't (or, more correctly choose not to) keep up with the tornado of a mess that my kids produce constantly. I try. I don't always succeed.

I also take short cuts. I sometimes kick something under the couch that I know no one will ever miss and doesn't really have a home, but if one of my boys sees it in the trash, will be reduced to tears. I never leave the dishes undone, but my coffee pot could use a good scrubbing. My basement playroom sometimes doesn't experience a cleaning presence for days at a time. I may have a dust bunny the size of Texas under my guest room bed.

I also have a pesky car in my kitchen. I swear, I have picked this same car up a dozen times and put it away, but still it seems to live in my kitchen! So lately, I am tired of said car and am actually sweeping around him! I kick him to the side, sweep where he was, then kick him back again and move along. Am I just to lazy to pick this guy up again? Why yes, yes I am!

No Dumping

We all have things that drive us crazy when it comes to our kids. One of mine is dumping.

I hate it when my kids enter that stage where they feel the need to simply dump things. A nice bin of Legos? Let's dump it in a pile! And here is a separate bin of dinosaurs! Let's dump it and add it to the mix! Oooh... puzzles! those would look better dumped out into a pile of pieces!

Play dates are especially stressful to me as it seems my baby boy is not the only one who enjoys this. I turn into the crazy, mean mom who keeps lecturing other boys on proper ways to play, trying to force them to clean up after themselves, or, at least actually play with what they have dumped out. Some kids really do only dump, but never actually play with the dumped toy. Like nails on a chalkboard...

My older two boys have tried it and learned their lesson. They no longer dump without permission. Sometimes, you need the bin of Tinker Toys dumped out to find that piece you are looking for. I get it. We do it. They also always play with the dumped toys afterwards.

Jack, however, is still learning. He still desires to dump his bin of dinosaurs out before he plays with his bin of cars. This was the age I struggled to teach my older two boys, so I have hope that Jack will quickly learn not to irritate mom in this way as well.

Am I not allowing my boys to experience the sheer joy of dumping? Perhaps. I just can't stand dumping for the sake of dumping.

What drives you crazy?

My Favorite Stocking Stuffer

Nothing says "Merry Christmas!" like a pooping polar bear.  

The boys are having quite a bit of fun with these and I keep finding nuggets all over the living room.  Don't worry, they taste like root beer...

Beware of Falling Objects

Jack has made an important discovery: gravity.  I'm sure he is not the first to discover this amazing phenomenon: seems like I've heard of it before, but he is pretty excited about it, nonetheless.  It seems there is no end to the fun of dropping things and watching them fall.  I load his high chair up with as many toys as I can and see how much I can get done in the kitchen before they all hit the floor: not much, I can tell you that.  

The bookcases in my living room are a great place to practice this idea of gravity as well.  He can reach the three bottom shelves and he regularly empties them of books, one by one, holding a book at eye level, then dropping it and watching it fall before grabbing the next.  This morning, he thoroughly explored my Stephen King collection.  He must really enjoy Mr. King because he took a break from dropping him to actually sit in a pile of his books and chew on them.  I think he enjoyed those books almost as much as Matt did, and was only about as hard on them as Matt already has been.  (I feel I should clarify here that Matt doesn't chew on books, just really "breaks them in.")

He loves to stand at the couch while I sit here and drop the same toy over and over again (provided I continue to pick it back up and hand it to him again and again.)  

As if I needed yet another mess-maker in my house of messy boys.  We are really working on teaching the big boys to clean up their own messes, but let's face it - I still do the bulk of picking up and cleaning up.  The book mess got old after about 3 seconds.  I'm not sure how to keep him away from bookcases and I certainly can't just leave the bottom three shelves of all 4 bookcases empty.  

I really can't enter a room now that has not been ransacked by Jack.  I know that soon, he will move from this dropping stage to the dumping stage though, which, in my mind at least, is even worse.  My older boys are not allowed to dump toy bins, but Jack has yet to learn that valuable lesson.  

So for now, I am on pick-up patrol.  Kids are messy, right?  Toys are meant to be played with.  Kids can learn to clean up.  Jack can be distracted from the books (sometimes.)  I do sometimes feel like I need to wear protective head gear around the stairs though when he is standing up there.  He has discovered that dropping toys makes WAY more noise if he systematically drops toy after toy through the railing, watching and listening to it crash and roll and clatter down each step.  Thank you, Jack, for giving me some more to do with  my days.  I was feeling a bit... bored and lazy.

He Asked For It...

For the first time since Mitchell became a part of Ben's world, Ben has decided there are some of his toys that Mitchell MUST not be allowed to touch anymore.  For the 3+ years that Mitchell has been alive, Ben has graciously shared all of his toys as if they belonged to both of them.  It has been wonderful.  

Yesterday, however, Mitchell crossed the line.  He completely destroyed one of Ben's precious dragons - it was just a stump of a toy - legs all missing, wings gone, half the head pulled off.  It really did look unrecognizable.  As I struggled to hold in the laughter at how completely and effectively Mitchell totaled this thing, I tried to get Ben to figure out a way to keep it from happening again.  The answer he came up with (and became increasingly excited and animated and detailed about as he thought about it) was to have a special place where he could put any toy he didn't want Mitchell to play with.  But the best part of his master plan was to make signs with NO MITCHELL written on them, which he would post at this secret place (so much for being secret, huh?)  It really is a forbidding-looking corner of the house.  He was not subtle with his artwork.

So the dragons are safely put away in my coat closet with half a dozen signs up, warning his little brother that he is no longer trusted with his most valuable possessions.

Mitchell's response to all this?  I think he actually showed some true remorse once he saw that, for the first time, he was not welcome, or even included, in some scheme Ben was up to.  He was definitely feeling left out.  As sad as it was to see him feeling this way, I think maybe this might have worked!  I doubt he will be destroying any more of Ben's dragons or other precious treasures.  Maybe I should leave the discipline up to Ben more often...