I’ve recently decided that if I can’t get the house clean, I need to attempt to contain the madness in some fashion. This has resulted in Cuddle-Bear’s room being a bomb blast at roughly the same time as the living room, but different toys in each location. Strangely enough, this makes it easier to deal with. We’re still working on the concept of how the toys for room X stay in room X, but I think we’re closer to actually accomplishing this then when I started. The living room toys not mingling with the toys in Cuddle-Bear’s room is a sign that this is quite possibly working.

Some people have told me that I am a crazy woman for trying to teach my 2 year old son to clean up his toys. Among the arguments against this effort has been the following:

• He’s just a baby! Let him play and make a mess, for goodness sake!
• He won’t understand that he has to pick up his toys, he’s too young.
• It’s not fair to make kids pick up their toys when they’re so little. There’s so many toys. It’s just too much work for them!

If you look, you’ll notice there is one thing that keeps ringing out clearly here behind these statements. The parent who attempts this is somehow in the wrong and undermining their child. Now, I have a question, if we can turn picking up his dirty laundry into a game of basketball, is it still work? He’s laughing, almost to the point of screaming, as he throws dirty socks into the laundry basket, often taking them out to throw them in again. The same can be said of the process of picking up toys also. If you turn it into a game, is it still work? Or is he playing?

To say the least, there has been alot of stuff that has been disguised as play recently, or my stubborn Cuddle-Bear would just refuse to be in the room with the object of scorn. Eating broccoli has turned into being a dinosaur eating trees, picking up the army of toy cars has become driving them into the garage, and bath time is now splash time for Cuddle-Bear. It takes a little bit of time to get into the habit of looking at how something as mundane as eating your vegetables can be turned into something fun, but it’s shocking how well it works.

It has been a little bit of effort to convince my husband that turning everything into something fun is a good idea. He has seen, however, that the results are real. Cuddle-Bear was resisting nap time with a great deal of ferocity until it became time to help his baby sleep, just like his little brother. Next thing we know, Cuddle-Bear is holding a toy and humming to it in his bed with the blankets up over him. Almost fifteen minutes later, he’s asleep. Not bad, don’t you think? Mental flexibilty is a must for parents. People seem to think this is exclusively for the multi-tasking thing but it’s so much more. It lets us ride the chaos around us like a wave, moving all of us forward on that grand adventure of life.

And yes, it is alot easier to be so optimistic about it all when both of the kids are napping and I have half of the kitchen clean. All that’s missing is a nice hot shower, but that’ll be tonight after the boys are in bed for the night. My house is not messy, it is lived in and contained. After all, those bright pink dinosaurs live in the living room, they only visit the kitchen from time to time (usually around four thirty in the afternoon).