I feel like I've been "spring cleaning" for 2 months now! I start on a room and end up pulling everything out and then Alex decides to help, and then I get interrupted. Then 2 months later everything looks worse than it was in the first place.
I finally decided I'd had enough of the toys constantly spread through the whole house and packed about 95% of them away. I figured my kids had too many toys anyway and decided it would be sort of an experiment to see what Alex would do.
Well, I asked for it. In the last 2 days Alex has drawn on the bed frame, drawn on the walls (It came off), drawn on the mirror, drawn on the couch, (I confiscated all the crayons but am still finding little hidden stock piles in her room), pulled the entire roll of paper from her easel into a pile on the floor, pulled EVERYTHING off her bed (including the mattress) twice, made a sandwich of Archie between the bed and mattress with her on top, cleaned out her jacket drawers and dragged the little plastic dresser across the room, cleaned out her clothing drawers and made a mess of the clothes, dumped the jar of tiny little elastic hairbands on the floor, taken her poopy diaper off without telling me and kept on playing with a dirty bum (thank goodness for extra long t-shirts on BOTH occasions), found where I hid the blocks and threw them all out of the box and around the room, scattered every piece of play food and kitchen equipment she could find all over the room, plus she still had enough energy and toys to still argue with Archie about.
Keep in mind this is only a list of the things she did while I was nursing Heidi, fixing dinner, and thought she was asleep during nap times. Thank goodness we've been outside a lot.
At least she is being creative.
But, in the last 2 days she has also, made me smile 100 times, played with and treated Heidi with such kindness and in such adorable ways it made want to cry from joy, listened and obeyed when it really mattered, played with the chickens, sung me a dozen songs, taught ME sign language, cleaned up when I asked her to, gone to bed without whining, helped cook lunch, said thank you without being prompted, fetched diapers, asked to have her diaper changed, sat on the toilet without whining, colored me a picture (on paper), eaten celery without being bribed, read me stories, let me read stories to her, snuggled up to me and let me hold her, brushed my cheek tenderly with her little hand, put on her own pants, asked me to put a shirt on her (a real victory these days), put on socks without being asked or begged, and made me look at her and think what a lucky mommy I am to have such a wonderful little girl.
On the flip side, this week Heidi has....
Smiled, slept, pooped, jabbered, cried, smiled, rolled over, eaten her toes, gazed at me with those all knowing eyes, and smiled.
As for my house, I have yet to give up on it being organized once and for all. But I've come to the realization that in order to have my house in order, be a half way decent mom, AND have the dishes done, I may have to give up on things like- free time during naps, hobbies, and sitting. We are also trying to get rid of all the junk clogging closets and sheds that are taking up the space that is needed for things we actually use, but don't want sitting in the middle of the floor all the time. This is why if you drive by our house it looks like one big yard sale all the time, we are in the midst of cleaning out the shed/house/making DI piles. Plus with all the neighborhood kids and toys, planter box garden and bikes, it just looks like a yard sale anyway. So maybe with a little luck I'll find a place for everything and get everything in it's place before the first snowfall.
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