Little monsters.
No really they are the sweetest things.
Ever.
But they are very good at creating very large messes very, very quickly and very, very quietly.
Yesterday I finally had both the energy and the time to go finish up my Christmas shopping. I didn’t have a ton of stuff to get (thanks to the fact that we simply are not doing much as far as gifts this year) but I had to go to stores that were not close to each other, so I needed a good chunk of time to accomplish my tasks, and no kids.
So I left the husband in charge of one miniature sleeping child and two awake ones who were perfectly happy (at the time) to sit out on the front steps and play in the dirt by our front door with some matchbox cars. He didn’t seem to excited about the situation since he was trying to fix some miscellaneous thing on his super old Land Cruiser, but he was given no choice. It was not a question of will you watch the kids for a couple hours. It was more of, ok I’m leaving and I don’t know when I’ll be back.
Good luck.
May the force be with you.
Or something of that sort.
And off I went with my purse and my list and no carseats.
After being gone approximately, umm, several hours… By the way, why the heck does Walmart think it’s a good strategy to re-arrange all the toys for the holidays? I mean I know they are Walmart and I am sure it works for them. However, it is VERY frustrating when I know what I want and I know where it is supposed to be and then it’s not there when I go to get it.
I left in a huff after not being able to find what I wanted and of course neither could their sales associates and went and got exactly what I wanted in about 10 minutes at Kohl’s. Poo…..I returned.
I came home to guess what.
At least one if not two of my children (and I think my husband) in their under ware and a very messy house.
Now I am not in least bit blaming the husband.
I just want to state that now.
I understand he goes into survival mode when watching the kids and he was trying to get his own project done. So there.
Normally I probably would blame him, but we’ll leave that for next time.
My point is, the mess.
OH. THE. MESS.
Here I am pregnant, tired from shopping, no nap, an irritated husband, dinner to fix (you’ll not be seeing a recipe from last night. I managed spaghetti), and the messy house of the century.
SO.
So, so, so let me tell you of another good game that I know… (Name that book?)
I knew it would not be a good idea for me to start cleaning, physically and mentally a pregnant woman cannot handle it at this point.
There would be yelling and aching backs.
I don’t like either one.
Who made the mess?
Well, certainly not ME.
So who gets to clean up the mess?
The KIDS!!!!!
And how do we accomplish that before dinner? You might ask.
We make it a…competition!
What motivates 5 year old boys more than competition? NOT MUCH.
And what motivates 3 year old girls? NOT MUCH and certainly not competition. However, the excitement of Linus being excited about the competition seemed to be enough to motivate her a little.
So the deal was, we went room by room, starting with the dining room. They had to beat the clock to win and get a prize. They were given minimal time to make it challenging and so they knew they must stay on task or they wouldn’t win.
I gave them 7 minutes for the dining room because it was REALLY bad. Food, dishes, banana peels, crayons, melty beads, coloring books, clothes shoes, cups, I don’t even know. They hustled and they beat the timer with a minute to spare, and they received – marbles.
They each have their own jar to put marbles in, as they do chores I reward them with a marble or two or three, depending on a few things like the size of the job, how thoroughly they did the job and whether they did it joyfully or not. Once the jar is full, the owner of the full jar gets a reward. The reward is different every time, it’s usually something Jeremiah, the child and I agree on together. They got their scooters that way, Linus has gone to the Lego store, I have taken Juliette on a shopping day, things like that. We usually try to do a special date with a parent out to ice cream or something like that, but if there is a specific item that they want they can work to earn that too, to them the possibilities are endless.
So getting marbles is a big deal to them.
So for every room they cleaned before the timer went off, they received a marble. There was only one room they didn’t get their marbles for, and that was the TV room and it was because they tried to pile everything that was on the floor onto the couch and I busted them and made them do it properly, so they ran out of time. But they earned their marbles for the dining room, living room, basement, each of their bedrooms and for unloading the dish washer.
They worked hard, they felt good about it, there was no crying and they got rewarded….
And I got to spend the evening with my feet up because there was nothing left to clean (except for my bedroom!).
But I did that today 😉
- Huckleberry Plum Pie - January 1, 2017
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