One of the most challenging things I’ve found about being the mother of an infant and a toddler is my limited ability to clean up a mess. Or, I should say, to be *patient* about cleaning up a mess.
I’m not exactly a neat freak, but I do value having a somewhat clean and tidy home. This pretty much clashes with Lucy’s take on life, which includes lots of delightful exploring with mud, salad dressing, ketchup, and cream cheese (and that’s just before breakfast). In theory, I think experimenting with such substances is very beneficial for the toddler’s mind. But, as I don’t want to find bits of cream cheese smeared all over the house, and as I am often nursing the baby and cannot easily wipe the aforementioned cream cheese off of Lucy’s hands, I find myself wanting to prevent the whole process from starting. Which is no fun.
I recently found this great pair of photos on the last page of the May 2008 issue of “_Wondertime_ magazine”:http://boydsnest.org/news/2007/the-labor-story/ which so clearly illustrates the tension I feel.
I put it up on our fridge as a reminder of the higher goal. I’d love to always be relaxed enough to enjoy sweet moments where Lucy plays with all-purpose flour while I’m rolling out my “calzones”:/news/2008/olive-calzones/, knowing that I can just clean up the disaster later. Sometimes I succeed and we have fun cooking together — then I spend some time afterwards wiping up the dusty, gooey mess that has erupted in the kitchen, hoping that Rosie won’t wake up until the worst of it has been whisked away. No big deal. But sometimes I just can’t take it and I sit Lucy in front of “_The Muppet Show_”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muppet_Show while I’m trying to make dinner. I definitely have some room for growth here.
Someday, Lucy will be old enough to actually help with the clean-up process. Someday, Rosie will join in the fun and we’ll all make a mess together. And someday, maybe I’ll get a live-in housekeeper and won’t have to worry about this at all! Yeah, that’s it!
I LOVE the picture – just LOVE it. My big old dining room table has nail polish on it from when I was a kid, and a whole neighborhood worth of nail polish on it from my kids and their friends. It’s fun on a table, but not really many other places. Perhaps there’s some sort of happy medium you could develop, by dedicating one table or one space to these daily explorations, but not necessarily allowing them to upset your whole house. It sounds like the kitchen is pretty key to your sanity and you might need to limit the destruction to just a table or counter in there.
A friend of mine once told a story of trying to placate a toddler while talking to a client on the phone. The toddler was next to her in a playpen, and mom was feeding her one Cheerio at a time. But the toddler was ramping up her vocalizations and mom was having less and less success keeping the appointment going. So she first threw in a few handfuls of Cheerios and finally dumped the whole box over her delighted child’s head. I’ve never used a playpen, but that is an application I would definitely try.
My toes almost always look like that! It’s Kaia’s favorite pastime.
Mo has become quite fascinated with digging in the dirt. It’s great, he can spend almost an hour just digging in it, and I can pat him off when he’s done.
Funny now that I have the first two days of Lou Tice’s seminar under my belt I’m thinking, Ann needs to write an affirmation in the present tense about how she is able to handle a little mess and how it makes her feel good to know that Lucy can play and learn, and the house won’t be destroyed. Yep, I have a huge stack, although mine tend to be opposite (as in I clean my house daily). I wrote more about it on my blog, but I can’t believe how differently I’m looking at every life situtation.