Saturday, March 27, 2010

Highlights

Things have been pretty busy around here...in the ward we have had three funerals in less than two weeks, we had a flood at the elementary school (Becca's classroom is being totally redone), we had a very green St. Patrick's day complete with shamrock waffles & green syrup for breakfast green mac and cheese (not appealing...be grateful there was not a picture) and split pea soup for dinner.
We have watched Matthew for a couple days while Haylee is in the Philippines (my mom has watched him most of the time), today we had a Primary activity, we have started working in the yard on the days that it isn't covered in snow, and life keeps moving forward.

My favorite thing that has happened this week involved Sarah. I have been cleaning her room for her a lot more than I would like, so after she turned five I cleaned out her whole room...under the bed, in the playhouse, went through all her clothes, and cleaned out all her toys, and it looked great. I told her that now that she is five she is big enough to clean her own room. I told her that if she would just clean up her toys as soon as she was finished with them and put her dirty clothes in the hamper each night that her room would stay nice and clean.
Every morning I reminded her to make sure her room was clean & for the most part she was pretty good about getting it cleaned up...or so I thought.
After about a week I went to do her laundry and she didn't have very many items in her hamper, so I waited a few more days. Pretty soon Sarah's room started to smell pretty bad, and there were quite a few toys and dress-up clothes on her floor so I told Sarah to go clean it up. I came up a few minutes later and saw that she had shoved some of the things that were out under her bed. I was surprised that she would try to convince me her room was clean without at least putting them ALL the way under so I couldn't see the mess. I bent down to pull out the things that were sticking out from under the dust ruffle and had to catch my breath.
Under Sarah's queen sized bed there wasn't room for a Polly Pocket shoe. That child had shoved the last week's worth of mess under there. It probably took almost thirty minutes just to remove everything she put under there (I made her crawl under the bed to get it all out).
As she pulled the assorted treasures out from the bed I started to pick them up, and it wasn't until she finally finished that I wished I had waited to start cleaning so I could have had visual proof about how much stuff she was able to fit in there.
I did, however, figure out the stinky smell...Sarah had shoved 3 wet diapers under her bed. (I had asked her to take them out to the garbage).
So far she hasn't tried shoving anything else back under the bed which is good because if she does, she may very well be sleeping in a sleeping bag until she's 18. :)

4 comments:

Kristy said...

Best story ever...my kids will have beds that are nailed to the floor...

Brigham said...

Sarah!!! Of course, I was master of shoving under the bed (and I had a trundle) so I guess I can't say too much...

Katie said...

Maddy shovels her mess under the bed too! Out of sight - out of mind, I guess! Thank goodness we have no diapers in the house yet - that's disgusting!!

Liesl said...

Heather -

I have the perfect solution to the 5 year old cleaning the room problem. I'll share it with you if you'll tell me how to get my 13 year old to clean her room... Ok, I'll just share it with you...Introduce your girls to the House Fairy. The House Fairy in our house comes very randomly and leaves little (Target $1 or less) items in clean bedrooms. If a bedroom isn't clean she will leave a note or other indication that she was there and the room wasn't clean enough to leave anything(a sprinkle of candy sprinkles, glitter, a note etc). All I have to do is ask my boys if their room is "House Fairy Ready" or mention that I think the House Fairy may be near and miracles occur.