Sittin' on my Hands....

So, as most kids are - Bebe is a tad messy in her bedroom.

She comes by it naturally.

It's genetic probably. Handed down by me. And her Dad (although he'll probably say "Nuh-uh!")

So, every once and awhile, I'll go in and help her do a massive clean up in her room. I even cleaned it (took me 3 solid hours) while she was at her Grandma's this summer.

Other times, I'll give her a checklist of things to put away and try to keep the mess at bay.

Well, this past weekend, I asked her to clean up her room.

She did not. Well, technically she put things away, but not to the extent of calling her room clean.

So, then I tried helping her break it down into chunks for her and giving her specific things to do each night this week - with a reward of Auntie coming up to eat lunch with her on Friday.

Tonight's the last night of her room cleaning to see if she gets her super special Auntie lunch tomorrow. Since I feel like I have contributed to this (you know, the whole genetics thing), I figured that I should help her out.

Only, I KNOW that if I go in there and "help" her, it'll turn into me cleaning and her dancing. This has happened. There's video proof of it - I think on my husband's facebook page.

So, I decide, I'll go in there and sit on my hands and only offer encouragement. And guidance. And resist all urges to get up and start putting things in their bins.

I was successful, but all the time I'm thinking in my head... "You're going to keep that deflated balloon from like, a month ago?" and "Really, child, umm, you could have put that away right after you used it..." but I kept my mouth shut and just kept helping her keep on track.

I'd love to tell you that she made it and her room is so sparkling that I have to wear shades. That would be lying to you. Lying is bad.

She made a good dent in it, and I think with one or two more sessions with me sitting on my hands, she'll get there and then hopefully have learned a life lesson.

Or we'll be back to the mom encouragement tour - coming monthly to a 7 year old's bedroom near you.

(BTW if I rambled on or didn't make sense, it's because I just took an allergy pill - the pollen / fungus / tree poop / etc around here is CRAZY!)

Attack the Playroom!

So, I've been away for awhile... it's called the end of school. Now that school is over and I'm able to breathe again, I'm back! This past weekend, our family went out to East Texas to attend the Harris Family Reunion (my paternal grandmother's side). I'll blog more about that later! We had a great time and got some good pictures (including one of the whole family - my sister's, mine, and my parents - which is unheard of!) and lots of fun stories to tell.

Well, Auntie (aka - My Partner in Crime; or Lucy) is here for her annual visit and we always do something big -house wise. Like when we first moved into this house 3 years ago, buying a game table (got it at CCA for I think $40), hauling it into the van and into the house. Or last year, when we became the crafty girls and sewed, sewed, sewed. Well, this year, it was attack the playroom!

I've been battling the playroom for quite some time now, and between rearranging it, cleaning it, and trying out different arrangements again, I finally accepted the fact that we needed a new computer desk. We have had the old one for 9 years, and it was big and a great big collector of junk. Now that we have a flat screen monitor and other things, we don't need that big of a desk. So, Auntie, the kids, and I loaded up into good ol' Bessie (my van) and headed to CCA. Big score again like last time, right? Nope. So then we wandered around a couple of thrift stores (and found out our Goodwill doesn't do furniture) and ended up with one we needed to assemble from Walmart. No problem. We're strong, independent women and can do it ourselves. We only asked Jason for help once. Just once. Then we got the drill (and Bebe kept reminding us that the instructions said "No drill" -- we just explained that we wouldn't do the drill super fast and it would be ok.) and took care of business.

Let me tell you the amount of JUNK that I cleaned out from the old computer desk! Oh My Goodness! But, it had to be done.

So my playroom went from looking like this:

To looking like this:

I couldn't have done it without Auntie or Bebe. It took us only about 6 hours and that is stopping for Mamu's potty emergencies, dinner, and storytime for bed. That's pretty good, if I do say so myself.

And since I am saying so myself, I think it turned out pretty good!

(I can't believe I posted pictures of my messy, messy playroom, but I'm human. All the debris is from me not being able to get into the playroom to clean since I've been so tired with the end of school, it just got put on the back burner.)