First of all, I wanted to thank everyone for all their love and support with my last post. Readers might not see the comments here, but I also got a lot of kind messages through Facebook, email and Twitter. Truly, it's meant a lot to me. Today's mood is fairly sunny, with a slight chance of irritability as the weather front of cleaning and organizing can influence the mood.
I'm a pretty tidy person. I like order in my life and as I get older, I find I'm getting more and more like my mother in needing a clean kitchen in the morning and clothes put away as soon as they're out of the dryer.
Unfortunately life with kids is not very conducive to any modicum of cleanliness. Toys everywhere, sticky tables, endless laundry, wet counters, crumbs, so many crumbs, bookcases clumsily put back together, endless laundry. "Time to tidy up" is a consistent phrase coming out of my mouth. I am not someone who endorses mess.
Although this morning, I found myself in a different mode. Mister Ninja has drama class Saturday mornings, so I am left with Baby D and A Dude, often just A Dude as Baby D naps. I came on here to steal a few moments to surf, play and write. A Dude playing with his cars in another room, Baby D napping. This room is carpeted, other than the stairs and a portion of the basement, the only area that is carpeted. A Dude wanders in from his cars and trucks with a box of markers looking for some paper. I give him a few sheets and instruct him to go back to the drawing area on the floor so that any marker spillage is easily wiped up. As he dutifully filed out paper and markers in tow, I stopped him. I told him to stay in the same room, on the carpet...WITH HIS MARKERS. I thought to myself that I was a seasoned pro at getting heinous stains two large dogs put into carpets, what's the worst a little Crayola can do.
It was worth it. Listening to him chatter to himself while colouring. Doling out the papers in a circle around him "One for daddy, one for mommy, one for Nelson" and him asking me to uncap the markers with his little chirpy "Tank youps!" every time I handed one back to him and watching him scribble out the planets, dinosaurs and the big bang theory (my kid is a genius) on paper was worth any marker spillage. All too soon, his chatter and masterpieces were done...like 5 or 10 minutes-the three year old attention span. He wandered off, after refusing to tidy up. I decided to preserve the moment and not get into a Mommy vs A Dude head butting contest and picked up the collection of art pieces scouring the carpet for marker spillage.
Not too bad I think to myself, completely worth a more colourful carpet for those 10 minutes of one on one time, a rare commodity in this house now. Learning about dinosaurs, planets and the big bang from the eyes of a three year old. Those marks on the beige carpet don't need to be washed away, I'll look at them 20 years from now when he's in University or changing the world or space, with tears in my eyes remembering those moments, his creativity, the time when he sat with mum and coloured and marked up the carpet to no end. My anal clean self doesn't need to clean them up, they are there to stay. *thumb twiddle, thumb twiddle, eye twitch*
....On the other hand, thank God he used the washable markers. Those marks don't need to stay there to preserve the moment, that's what blogs are for. Cheers!
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