danieljohnson

It's pretty amazing how big a mess a little person can make. It's even more amazing how long time it takes for the parents to pick the stuff up. We live in a two storey house with all the bedrooms upstairs. So Daniel likes to play downstairs since that's where the rest of us are most the time. He has toys in the TV room stored away in drawers and boxes. Lots of toys. Still it takes him less than ten seconds to pull all of them out on the living room floor. He's just as fast as Lucky Luke. He hasn't learned yet how to clean up the mess he made, so I get to do it. A friend of ours gave us a piece of advice last year in the US to pick up the toys only once a day. That's great advice. I can't do it though.

We seem to have two extremes. We either pick the stuff up before Daniel is done playing with it or we leave it there for the next day. Why bother since he's going to have the same stuff on the same floor the very next day again, right? It's not like the Cleaning Police is going to come and arrest us. So we live in a constant mess. And that's no fun. So I pick the stuff up and put it where ever I think it should be. Daniel has his moments of clarity and seems to "remember" or know where his oh so important keys or teddy bear or what have you is. Most of the time he has no idea. Idea or not, he still tries his hardest to "remember". He has started saying out loud " Think, think, Daneil" and taps his finger on his cheek. Cute. (He calles himself Daneil, he can't seem to get the letters out quite right for the moment.) And off he goes and finds the keys or the teddy bear. Amazing.