Fun Times

Most of the toys in John's room are locked away right now. You see, several days ago, John used his quiet afternoon time to "organize" his toys by taking almost everything he owned and making a nearly four-foot high stack with them. Envision dumping his bin of Matchbox cars, dumping his bin of trains, emptying out all his bureau drawers of clothing, dumping out all his tool chest drawers of automotive tools, going into his closet and emptying the bins of too small and too big clothing . . . . I didn't shriek at him or anything, but I did explain at length that this was decidedly not "organizing," it made a huge mess, and it created more work for Mama. I told him not ever to do that again.

Then I made the Big Mistake of cleaning it up myself when he was asleep. Like I am a Magic Cleaning Fairy.

So two days later, he did it all over again, this time filling a big blue storage bin full of most of his toys. He told me it was for "donation to the poor children." I think you mothers can imagine just how tempted I was to agree with him and take the whole bin to donate to the poor children! But I knew at three he doesn't have any concept of permanency, so that wouldn't quite be fair of me, so instead I explained again, reminded him how he was not ever supposed to have done this, and told him that he'd have to put everything back neatly himself (with Mama helping direct him). He fell into wails that that was "too much work." So we talked through our options, none of which was that Mama was going to clean it up for him again. I offered that if he refuses to clean it up, then I would take the whole bin and lock it away in the guest room until he was ready to put everything away neatly. That is what he chose. It was all very rational with no yelling involved.

So now his room is pretty barren . . . and neat! And I noticed today that the kids sure played creatively!

John had asked yesterday evening if he could do an experiment of freezing blueberries in a cup of water, so we did. This morning he pulled it out of the freezer and put it in a glass dish to show Mary how it melted. Note the jar of dead hornets which Mary carried with her everywhere all day.

Later we baked oatmeal cookies to use some more of those oats. John decided that he and Mary should make "pineapple crunch," which is apparently a mixture of blackstrap molasses, flour, salt, and chocolate candies--but no pineapple. And note the ever-present jar of hornets. Buzzzzz.

The kids also played "zoo night," in which John drew the curtains in the den, turned out the lights, and then the two children ran around with a flashlight, giggling madly. I thought that that game was fantastic.

The kids have been playing hide and seek lately, and I'm very impressed that a 20-month-old can understand any version of that game. In the above video (and starting before I hit 'record,'), Mary was covering her eyes and counting "one, three, one, three!" (sometimes she counts "one, three, six!"). Then she ran to find John "hiding" around the corner, she hugged him and said, "I catching me!" (which is the same construction of one of her new sentences, "I read me?" which means "You read to me?"). But then "tragedy" struck because she hugged too tight, bonked her mouth into John's back, and hurt herself.