A tough day today...with moments of joy :)

So I decided enough was enough with the mess in our house, today I am cleaning up!

For the most part that went okay. Floors are clean, lots of recycling ready to go, kitchen table is cleaned off, Jim's chair is over at the church, back hall cleaned up, Christmas stuff all put away and toys tidied. All good.

It was an exercise in patience....
one four year old who thought it would be a good day to play with his millet seed. WAY easier to clean up than sand, rice, or other such sensory hide stuff in and play with types of material. AND has the added bonus of being able to be composted and the plants fed to the bunnies in the spring. BUT NOT fun to sweep a floor, see a lad playing (and spilling) seed over a floor I had just swept and cleaned up. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One boy child thought that getting mommy's Christmas present out so that HE could play with it would be a good idea. NOT. but we got it out, I showed him how it worked and then let him make one robot with mommy's help and then promptly forbade him from ever using it without mommy's help. Reminded him about what he could touch and what he could NOT touch of what was "mommy's stuff". Hard sell for a four year old, but he knows. Really....he does. he just doesn't always remember......... (or so he says).

He wanted to go outside very badly the whole time I was cleaning. Told him...as long as he changed his clothes and dressed for outside, he could go outside. He insisted the mommy had to go with him. So he had to wait until the house was mostly livable...and then off we went with daddy's chair over to the church and to play "german bunny" in the church yard.

We built a snowman... and well...

see...it's built....

but then the boy happened... :) (sheer joy on his part...that and determination....)

now mommy...now??? all done with the picture???

I will prevail over the snowman!!!!

to the point of STOMPING it to death!!!!!!!

Victory complete, on we went to play "german bunny".
German bunny is a bunny who lives in a castle, and whenever we go to visit him one of two things happens. Either hunters come and we turn into tigers who have to escape from them. OR dogs are set loose who like to bite people and we have to hide from them.

We want to visit german bunny so that we can get some jewels from him!

AND that's as far as the story ever progresses. :)

I do like these moments of sheer joy and fun. Makes it all somehow better when a day is tough with an arguing child that needs time outs and such like.