Friday, July 13, 2007

Terrible Two

My toddler has been terrible this week. She is not agreeable to seeing empty spaces. So all her toys are on the floor. There's a thick carpet of books and toys. Arrrggg... you can't move without stepping on something. Her older sister gets irritated too as I usually ask her help in putting back the toys in place. And what's more, after cleaning-up the place, sorting the books and the sets of toys, my 2 year old will spend all of one minute to restore her mess.

Last month, my daughter was not this mess lover monster. Well, not that much anyway, and she doesn't really look like a monster. She still looks deceptively sweet and she still has lots of "I love yous" for us. She was also scattering her toys then, but not to this extent. There are times when I don't want to look at her mess anymore and just pretend it's non-existent. But then again, if I don't clean up she or somebody in our family could get hurt.

We're in a dilemma here. My husband suggests we bury all her toys underground until she is old enough to clean up after herself. Of course, he was just joking. But I don't agree with the idea of keeping the toys away. She is a child, a toddler in this case, and this is her time to enjoy her toys. But at the same time I don't want to spend too much time cleaning up. Just seeing the mess makes me feel tired already. So, what to do?

As I was gazing at my charming little girl gleefully pouring the toys out of a box and pondering on my next move, I realized that she was really enjoying what she was doing. This was a game for her. She was not scattering her toys because she wanted to mess up things. She was simply playing and having fun.

I got up from my chair and started putting back the toys inside the box while singing Barney's clean-up song. My daughter sang along with me and picked up a toy from the floor and placed it in the box. After a while we finished our cleaning-up game and I happily moved on to my other tasks. CRASH!!! Hmmm... burying the toys underground doesn't sound like a bad idea after all.

1 comment:

Berni said...

I remember those days well. I had three boys and was a SAHM and homeschooling working Mom too. Thanks for comment about being a Grandma again.