Maybe they DO listen after all.

This morning my son came down stairs, gave me a big hug, and said "Mom, you are the BEST mom ever!"  I gave him a hug and poured him a bowl of the cereal of his choosing and went back to cleaning the kitchen. After a crazy morning of getting Seth out the door to work after an early morning "Can you come in NOW???" call I was trying to hurry and get the house straightened up before some company comes over.  Wyatt then asks me "Hey Mom? Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean?"  I said yes and went back to what I was doing.  I stopped what I was doing because I heard all this clinking and cabinets being opened and closed and I turned around and saw Wyatt un loading the dishwasher!!!  Wyatt is always a good helper when i ask him to do something but to see him do something on his own, with out being asked was amazing!  Not too mention he usually puts the dishes in neat little stacks on the counter because it is hard to reach and I actually put them away i the cupboard but today he was getting kitchen chairs and using them to help reach to actually put the dishes away!
I wish I knew what was going through his little mind this morning.  What was it that this time made him think to do that.  I feel like a broken record most days trying to teach my kids to be kind, to help others without being asked, and all the little things you try and teach your kids to do to help them be a kind and thoughtful person.  I drag my kids to church by myself each and every Sunday and wrestle with two toddlers while trying to keep them quiet and still so that hopefully they will learn something and feel that church is a special, happy place where they want to be. 
Yesterday the speaker spoke about serving others and he gave specific ways each member of a family could serve other members of their family.  While I was wrestling to wiggly squirmy girls I saw Wyatt listening intently to the speaker.  I could see he was making a mental check list of things that He could try and do.  Perhaps it was hearing this brilliant idea from someone else that made him want to come home and try it out for himself but I could tell how proud he was on his little face that he un-loaded the dishwasher all by himself without any one asking him to.
After I thanked him, and gave him a hug I saw him pump his fist and say "Yes! I did awesome!" quietly under his breath.  YEP!  He did awesome. And it made my day.

I need a new strategy!!!

I am a woman that likes her house clean.  I do not like toys and random objects strewn all over my house and I CERTAINLY do not like a messy kitchen and dirty dishes in the sink.  I find it very difficult to relax and think of anything else when I look around and see chaos and clutter all around.  That is why Wyatt is every Mom like me's dream child.  As soon as Wyatt is done doing something or playing something he quickly puts it away.  If there ever was a time when I had to ask Wyatt to clean up something I do not recall it.  The kid even clears his place from the table, granted there are crumbs and spills left behind but hey it's pretty impressive for a 7 year old.  Even as I type this he is lecturing Annie about putting things away where they go and telling her to clean up her messes.  He loves to organize his room and to go through his things telling me what he no loner uses and how we need to get rid of it.  He is a complete mini me!  I love it!

Now my little Annie is a completely different story.  She is an absolute force of chaos and destruction.  She has no interest in playing with toys.  Her idea of fun is to take the toy bins and to dump the toys all over the floor, spread them out all over the house and then go find something else to get into.  She loves lotion, chap stick, baby diaper ointment and any other cream and salve because apparently it is so much fun to rub and smear all over everything and anything she can think of.  Her idea of coloring is to take all the crayons out of the box, peel the wrappers off the crayons and then go scribble on anything BUT paper.  I figured play dough would be a fun idea for her. Surely squishing the dough between her hands and making fun things out of it should definitely keep her busy.  Well again Annie has a different idea.  Crumbling it all over the floor and making the biggest mess possible must be more fun then using it the proper way.

Seems baby Penelope is following in her big sisters foot steps.  This week she has figured out how to open all the doors in the house.  This has unlocked hours of fun in the form of mess making and destruction for Annie and Penelope. DOUBLE TROUBLE!  I came out of the bathroom the other day to find two delighted toddlers who had gotten into the pantry and opened at least one box of pasta and threw it all over the kitchen floor and were having the time of their lives throwing it all over the place.  While I was cleaning it up they proceeded to smear chap stick all over the coffee table. While I was cleaning THAT up I came around the corner to find them unrolling and shredding a whole roll of perfectly good toilet paper.  Now Annie spent a nice long time in the time out corner for those messes while Penelope stood beside her the entire time hugging her and laughing. What a pair!

Now you would think that this could easily be solved by making Annie clean up her own messes and toys.  Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that????!!!!  Oh wait... I did!  SO anytime Annie makes one of her messes, which is at least 6 times a day, she goes right to time out.  Then I spend the next hour with her making her clean it up which usually involves her telling me no, followed by her going back to time out over and over again until she finally gives in and takes another hour to as slowly as humanly possible clean up the mess.  You may be thinking, why aren't you watching her.  Yeah....  A girl's gotta use the bathroom once and awhile, or change Penelope's diaper, or take a load of laundry out.  that's all the time it takes, sometimes less than 2 minutes, for Annie to unleash her force of destruction! This is NOT fun and not exactly how I want to spend my days but that's the drill around here. Not too mention I am driving myself insane trying to keep some order and things picked up around here.

So I have been contemplating a different strategy for dealing with the messes around here.  What if I just wait until the end of the day to have one big massive clean up?  No cleaning up the same mess 5 times a day, no more spending an hour to get Annie to clean up her toys every time she gets something out.  Just deal with it once a day.  Is that possible?  How bad would it get if I waited until the very end of the day?  I don't know if I could handle it mentally. I might loose my mind having to see the chaos and messes all over the place.  But maybe, just maybe, I might enjoy my days better if I only had to deal with this once at the end of the day.  I'm not too sure, but it MIGHT be worth a week test run to see what happens.