A Few Things About the Kids

Amaya

The other day when I was taking Amaya to school she was naming off all the characters from Star Wars. Carson is obsessed with all of the Star Wars movies so on the weekends there is a good chance that one of the six movies is playing somewhere in our house. Anyway, after she had named off quite a few I started asking her to say some that she had left out, just because it's so cute to hear her pronounce them. I told her to say Chancellor Palpatine. She said, "I can't. That's Spanish."

We were watching American Idol on the night that the girls were performing. As soon as the Asian girl came on the screen and they were showing the clips of her, Amaya said, "Hey, that's a Chinese girl just like I'm a Chinese girl." That is the first time that she has associated another Asian person with herself. For a long time I've told her she was born in China, and just recently I started telling her she is Chinese. I never really knew if she fully understood any of it, but now I know that she is starting to. Whenever I see an Asian woman (and I know they're not all Chinese, but for her three-year-old mind I keep it simple and say they're Chinese) I tell her, "She's Chinese just like you. She's beautiful just like you." It just goes to show how big she's getting that she's starting to understand things.

A neighbor of ours has a girlfriend that has a couple of kids. She doesn't live there, but apparantly she is moving in with her kids. Carson and Hayden were outside playing this afternoon, and pretty soon the boy came out and started playing with them. He is eight-years-old, just like Carson, and he has a five-year-old sister, just like Hayden. I am so happy that there are finally going to be some kids living near us that our kids can play with. As it is right now, there is a five-year-old girl that another neighbor babysits sometimes, so she plays with the kids, but she is the only one. She's in Hayden's class, too, so he sees her all the time. The only problem I can forsee is that Carson and the boy will play together, and the two neighbor girls will play together, maybe including Amaya, and Hayden will be left out. We'll see how it goes.

The behavior chart is really working. The only thing it hasn't helped much with is the fighting and teasing. As far as mealtimes go, they have been perfect. They eat their meals without fighting or making a huge mess, and they are using their manners. Also, mornings trying to get ready for school have been great. They follow their routines and are ready for school early. Their afternoon and evening routines have been going really well, too. After school the first day when Hayden finished his afternoon routine he was mad because he like following it so much that he wanted there to be more stuff on it. I need to rework a few things on the chart for next week, but overall it is a success.

Carson

Every day Carson's teacher writes me a note, with a smiley face or a frowny face or a straight face next to it, depending on how he behaved that day. One of the spaces on his chart is school. I judge whether he gets a sticker each day by what his teacher wrote. Last week on Monday they didn't have school, Tuesday he got a frowny face (which is what he gets most of the time) and Wednesday and Thursday, after I implemented the chart, he got smiley faces. On Friday he had a substitute teacher. Normally when he has a substitute I don't get a note because they don't know the procedure. Carson was so worried about not getting a smiley face that day, and not getting a sticker, that he went up to the substitute, explained how the system works, and told her to give him either a smiley face, a straight face or a frowny face. She gave him a smiley face, so he was very happy about that. I was very happy, too, because for him to get three smiley faces in four days is miraculous. I'm sure if he keeps up the good work his teacher is going to be very happy, too, because I know he really wears her out.

Hayden

Hayden is the cutest kid I've ever seen, although he got a rather rough start in life when it came to looks. The first thing I noticed about him when the nurse laid him on my chest after he was born was that he looked like a bird. For the next week and a half he looked a little pathetic. Finally, after the second week, he started getting cuter. Even my dad, who died when Hayden was two and a half weeks old, made a comment to Hayden one day. He said, "Well, it looks like you're growing into your looks." Unfortunately, right after he stopped looking like a bird he got some sort of heat rash on his cheeks that lasted until fall, about two months. After that he just got cuter and cuter. Right now he is just so cute he drives me crazy. I just want to squeeze him like a teddy bear. I could just stare at him all day long. It's not just his looks that make him cute. His personality is pretty funny, too. Another thing that makes him cute is he's got a lisp; although I hope he outgrows it someday because a 40-year-old man with a lisp isn't as cute as a five-year-old boy with a lisp.

My Kids Are Brats

Don't get me wrong, I love them more than anything and think they are the cutest kids ever, but they have behavior problems. I'm not going to be one of those parents who thinks their kids are perfect and pretends that everything is fine. I do have to say that their bratty behavior is mostly at home. When we go out to a restaurant or the zoo or to other people's houses they are generally well behaved. The only people who really know how bratty they are are my mom and some of my friends, because they can hear them being bratty when I'm on the telephone. Also, before you think my kids are too bad, they generally aren't as bad as the kids I see on the TV show where the nanny comes to help people get control of their kids.

Here are some examples of the types of behavior we have to deal with: Mealtimes are a nightmare because all they do is fight and tease each other, and if they happen to be in the kitchen alone, they will even throw food. Mornings are a nightmare because they would rather goof off than get ready for school. Pretty soon mom and dad are yelling at them to get dressed, or get their back packs ready or get their coats and hats and gloves. It is a major fight to get them to clean their rooms; although I have to give some credit to Hayden because since we organized his room he has been much better. They are constantly teasing each other and fighting and hitting each other and calling each other names. They talk back to us and don't listen to us when we tell them to do something. Sometimes when I ask them to do something they will actually just stand there and say, "No." I can't believe I have kids who will talk back to me. That is totally unacceptable.

Most of the bad behavior is coming from Carson and Hayden. The bad behavior Amaya participates in is mainly the mealtime fiascos and the fighting, teasing and name calling. She really knows how to tease her brothers and get to them. I want to put a stop to it before it gets really bad, but actually right now it's pretty funny when she teases them.

Now before you think they are all bad, I feel like I should give some examples of some good things about them. They really love each other and when they aren't teasing and fighting they actually get along well. They play really well together and they are always hugging each other and telling each other that they love them. They are very loving. They are always making pictures for Mike and me and writing, "I love you" on them. They love to go visit our elderly neighbor lady and take cookies to her or put her newspaper on her porch if the delivery person put it on her sidewalk, since she can't walk down the steps. If I'm in the middle of an organizing project, which I have been a lot lately, they are very willing to help me out by picking stuff up or carrying things to different areas of the house. They love to read books to each other and play games with each other. So although they can be brats, they have a lot of great qualities, too, which is why I know there is hope.

But Mike and I have had it with their bad behavior, so I've been trying to think of a good way to get them to behave. I think I've finally come up with it.

First of all, yesterday I made a Student Control Journal for Hayden. Carson already had one, and in the past has gone through different stages of being really good at following it to ignoring it. I realize I need to remind them a lot to look at it and follow it if I want them to always do it. I customized the routines in the Control Journal to follow the things they need to accomplish every day, and I think it will work out great. After I made a big deal out of their Control Journals and explained how it works to Hayden, they both seemed really excited about them.

We started this morning with the Morning Routine. They actually got all ready for school on their own with no nagging or yelling on my part. They were even ready for school early. We actually had time for each of them to sit down and read a book to me before they left for school. There was no fighting, no teasing and everybody just quickly and quietly went about their routines.

I also made up a Reward Chart for each of the boys. I haven't decided what to do for Amaya yet, but it really isn't urgent at this point to do it for her. I am going to make up some sort of Reward Chart for her, too, so she doesn't feel left out. The Reward Chart is good for one week, starting on Sunday and ending on Saturday. I just made a simple table on a word processing program and put the days of the week across the top and the categories down the left side. I made them colorful and put each boy's name on the top. Obviously for this week I am blocking out Sunday to Tuesday since we aren't starting it until today. There are 12 categories on the chart which include things like: mealtimes, routines, chores, being respectful, no teasing and fighting, etc. Each day they will get a sticker for each category they accomplish without bad behavior. I don't expect them to be perfect, especially in the beginning until they get used to being good, so I am going to require them to get a sticker in 8 out of 12 categories each day to get a reward. If I can tell it is really working I may up that to 10 out of 12. I will never have it be 12 out of 12 because I don't want them to stress out about having to be perfect. The reward for each day will be that they get to pick something to do, whether it be playing a game, coloring or anything else they can think of, with just me. I explained what the reward is going to be and they thought it was a great idea. They like doing things with just me sometimes, but it's sometimes hard to do that with three kids. Usually we always just do things together. Sometimes I'll do things alone with each of the kids, but I think having it happen daily (I hope) or almost daily will be much better.

At the end of the week, if they've gotten a daily reward each day of the week, then they will get a larger reward. Each week it will change but I will decide at the beginning of the week what it will be. It might be that I will take them to the bookstore and buy a book, or I will let them pick a movie they want to watch and have it sent from Netflix (I have a membership), or go to the zoo or the botanical gardens (we have memberships to both), or play video games on the weekend. Most of the time it is going to be something free because I don't want to spend a fortune, and I also don't want to teach them that a reward has to cost money. There are a lot of fun, free things to do. This week I am going to let them pick a move from Netflix. They will each get to pick their own movie. Carson is already concerned about what if one of them gets to pick one but the other one wasn't good enough to pick one what will happen. I told him that if somebody doesn't get the reward, then when we watch the movie the other one will have to be in their own room doing something so they can't watch the movie. I hope he's not planning on being the one that doesn't get the reward.

So far for the two before-school categories they both got a sticker. As far as how they behaved at school, I am going to have to trust Hayden to be truthful about whether he had to go in time out or not. His teacher says he's pretty good, and he usually does tell me if he got in trouble, so hopefully he will continue to. As far as how Carson behaves at school, I get a note from his teacher every single day, so I will know if he was good or not. The reason I get a note from his teacher every day is another story, but at least I know what he did every day.

I am excited to put the Control Journals and the Reward Chart to work and see if it helps. I really think it will. I've done similar things in the past, but as soon as I can see that they are changing their behavior for the better, I stop doing it. I know that it is something that we are always going to have to do. Even if they get rewards every single day and every single week, I will stick to it so they won't relapse into the bad behavior.

Now I think I need to go make a reward chart for myself so I can give myself a sticker if I stick to my house cleaning routines, exercise every day, eat healthy, don't stay on the computer for too long, etc. If it works for the kids, maybe it will work for me, too.

Valentine's Day Cards

After my post about having to make 62 Valentine's Day cards for my kids, which after a re-count is really 64, Ter left a comment that I should have the kids do them, and I totally agree. However, I have a major character flaw that prevents that from happening. And when I say "a major character flaw" I do not mean to imply that I have only one, there are many others, too. Anyway the character flaw I'm talking about right now is that I am a control freak.

The kids did help me do their Valentine's Day cards, but I did the majority of the work. There are two reasons for that: (1) I'm a control freak and like to have control over things like that (which I am trying to overcome in situations like this), (2) some of the things to do with these cards are just too hard for them to do right (I know this still relates back to Reason No. 1).

Amaya's cards aren't done yet because she doesn't need them until tomorrow. I've only made one sample, which Amaya is going to give to my mom today. Her cards require cutting, gluing, sticking and writing. She can wield a pair of child scissors and cut gashes in paper, but she can't cut out heart shapes. She can glue pieces of paper together, but not with any kind of precision. I am doing all of the cutting. I am planning on letter her put glue where it needs to be, but I'm going to actually place the pieces where they need to go. I am going to try to give up a little control and let her put the stickers on, but if it starts stressing me too much, I must take over. I know I shouldn't but we'll just have to see how it goes. She can't write so I'll be doing the writing. I have to make 12 of these for school.

Here is what her cards are going to look like. For some reason I couldn't get a picture that wasn't slightly blurry, so in case you can't read what it say on it it says, "You're unforgettable."



Hayden's cards required cutting, drawing, writing and gluing. He can cut, but these hearts need to be perfect or the card isn't going to look like what it's supposed to, so I cut them all out. He didn't care. He drew the face on the front of the cards, but he is a perfectionist, like me, and he had a fit after he did the first one because it didn't look perfect. Finally he relaxed and finished the rest of them. I wrote the saying inside, but he signed his name. I glued the antennas on because if he had done it there would have been more glue on the table, floor, himself and the walls than there would have been on the cards. Even though I probably should have let him do more than I did, he didn't care. He was happy to do what he did and he really loves his cards. We had to make 22 of these for school.

Here's is card. This was the first one so I did draw the face, but he did the rest.

Now for Carson's card. This is the coolest card, but it was also a pain in the ass to make, especially since we had to make 30 of them. This one required precise measuring and cutting, gluing and writing. I started out with the measuring and cutting, and then Carson wanted to help. I knew it wouldn't work out right, so I told him he couldn't. Then he got upset and I felt bad so I let him. I showed him how to measure and cut and he went to work. Later when he gave me the finished pile of measured and cut papers, I could tell that some were so far off that the weren't going to work, so I ended up having to cut a bunch more. Then he made some crucial cuts in all 30 of them, and after he was done and we were ready to start assembling them, I realized they were all wrong. That major screw up was mine. I told him to cut the wrong number of cuts. We had to start over, but we didn't have enough red paper to do them all, so we had to switch to white paper. So that screw up on my part cost us a few hours worth of work. I ended up measuring and cutting all of the new ones, then Carson wrote the message and signed his name. I glued the little hearts on the side. Here is what his card looks like on the front. In case you can't read what it says on the little hearts, it says "Pull."After you grab the hearts and pull, here is what it looks like.

Pictures don't do it justice, so here is a video showing what it does. Since I had to hold the camera under my chin while filming this, thereby not letting me see what I was actually filming, I think it turned out pretty good.

It may not look as cool on this video as it looks in real life, but let me tell you, it's cool. I'm thinking that every kid whose birthday party we go to this year might get a card like this. We'll just use different colors and a different saying. I am excited to see what the kids in Carson's class thought about the card. He was so excited about this card that I hope the kids all thought it was neat.

I have to say that I am totally not a crafty person, but I thought it would be fun for the kids (me) to make cards this year instead of buying the same old Spiderman or Pokemon cards. It was a lot of fun making them, and it would have been funner if I had planned ahead of time so I didn't have to stay up until 1:00 a.m. for two nights in a row making them. Also, next time I will try to give up the control a little and let the kids do more.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

I am in the midst of an organizing frenzy (I've just finished organizing three rooms, starting on the fourth), I'm trying to get documents together so I can take them to my CPA for personal and business taxes, I'm trying to get caught up on work (especially since I was just informed today that I have a ton of jobs coming up in the next two weeks), and I decided to make 62 homemade Valentine's Day cards for my kids to take to school. What kind of an idiot am I?

Chinese New Year Dinner

This morning I decided we should do something to celebrate the Chinese New Year, since we haven't done anything yet, and what better way to celebrate than with food. I decided to make an authentic Chinese dinner, at least as authentic as it can be without me being Chinese. I do have a cookbook that has authentic Chinese recipes in it. It is called The Chinese Kitchen by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. It is the only Chinese cookbook I have so I don't have a lot to compare it to, but it seems like a great book to me. It talks about Chinese cooking and gives a description of the different ingredients that are used and where you can get them. A lot of the recipes require a trip to an Asian market and they are fairly complicated. I picked out several recipes that didn't require special ingredients and seemed fairly easy.

I love to cook, and I think I'm pretty good at it, but I get a little stressed out when I'm trying to do a bunch of new recipes at once. I only screwed up a couple of times, and Mike only had to run back to the grocery store once. Now the kitchen is a disaster, but it was totally worth it. I can easily say that since Mike will be cleaning the kitchen!

Here is our menu for the night:

Egg Drop Soup (Don Far Tong) - This was the easiest recipe ever. It only has four ingredients (chicken broth, salt, eggs and green onions) and it was delicious. I will definitely make this again.

Shanghai Potsticker Dumplings (Wor Tip) with Vinegar Soy Sauce (See Cho Yau) - This was the hardest recipe. I've made this one once before so I knew how time consuming but delicious it is. When Mike was doing the grocery shopping he couldn't find commercial dumpling skins so I made mine from scratch. It was a major pain in the butt. Having pre-made dumpling skins would make preparing these so much easier. The cookbook says, "A little bit of folklore suggests that these dumplings were created by accident when one day an imperial chef, making dumplings, forgot them on his stove and they burned on one side. The chef, fearing punishment, admitted no mistake but said rather that he had created a new dish." These were Carson's favorite. I will definitely make these again, but will try to find commercial dumpling skins first. These are a great appetizer.

Longevity Noodles (Cheung Sau Jai Mien) - These were very good and pretty easy to make. I only screwed up once on this one, causing Mike to have to run to the grocery store, but it all worked out in the end. They were Amaya's favorite. I will make these again.

Sweet-and-Sour Pork ( Wu Loh Yuk) - This was surprisingly easy. According to the cookbook, this recipe is as it is traditionally prepared in China, especially Hong Kong, and is not an overly sweet dish with gluelike sauce, like what you get in America. I only messed up once on this one, by cooking the pork before putting the batter on. The pork is cooked twice, however, so before cooking it the second time I put the batter on and it turned out great. I love sweet-and-sour pork. This was Hayden's favorite. I will definitely make this again. I honestly think this was better than any sweet-and-sour pork I've had in a restaurant. It seems like whenever I have it from a restaurant the pork is rather tough, but this was just right.

I loved all of it. I love Chinese food and food-wise I was in Heaven when we were in China. I can't wait to make more recipes from this book. I have yet to venture out into a Chinese market, but I definitely need to in order to make a lot of the recipes from this book.

Overall I'd say that our dinner was a success.

Darn, just as I was typing that I realize I forgot to make the dessert I was going to make: Fried Fragrant Bananas (Jah Heung Jiu). I guess it's for the best since we were all stuffed after eating. We'll have that another night this week.

By the way, I did take pictures but it was with my 35mm camera because my digital camera's battery is dead. If I get them developed in the next week or so I'll post them.

Happy Chinese New Year.

Laundry Talk

The other day I was thinking about something to do with laundry that may seem strange, and I already know this post is going to veer off course and talk about something besides laundry first, but it's necessary for you to have a little background information about me.

First I have to admit that I'm sort of a germaphobe. I didn't used to be, but as the years go by I get worse. The kind of germs I'm talking about are...how do I put this delicately...butt germs. I hate toilets. I wipe my toilet at home down every day with antibacterial wipes. If I have to use someone else's toilet, or horror of horrors a public toilet, I make sure every part of it is covered up with either a toilet seat cover (called a cowboy hat in our family, I don't know why) or toilet paper. I do everything in my power to not let my kids use public toilets. I just hate toilets and any area that is closet to toilets. For example, the other day the container I keep my makeup in fell off the counter. A bunch of my makeup ended up near and behind the toilet. I had to throw it all away. Mike said I should just use antibacterial wipes and wipe them off, but I just couldn't. Luckily not all of it landed near the toilet so I do still have some makeup, but I did lose quite a bit. I can justify throwing it away, though, because a lot of it is old and I don't use it anyway. The reason I hate toilets should be obvious. There are butt germs all over them. Now that you have some background info on my phobia of butt germs, I'll get to the real reason for this post: laundry.

As I'm reading blogs I especially like to read about any tips that people have on organizing or how to make their households run smoother. I have read a lot about laundry. From what I've read it seems like a lot of people will take their dirty clothes to the laundry room in a laundry basket, wash and dry the clothes, and then put them in the same laundry basket to take them around the house and distribute them and put them away. I got to thinking about how many people do that. I was on the phone with a friend of mine the other day and I asked her if she does that, and she does. I don't do that. The reason I don't is because I know that a pile of dirty clothes usually contains underwear, and with all the clothes being mixed together I know that butt germs from the underwear have most likely touched the other clothes. The germs have also probably touched the laundry basket, and I don't want to put clean clothes in a basket that has butt germs on it. When I do laundry I carry the whole hamper down to the laundry room, sort the clothes into a three-bag sorter and then take the hamper back where it belongs. Then I put the dirty clothes in the washer and start it. Then I have to go wash my hands before I touch anything because it's extremely likely that I got some butt germs on my hands. One thing that really drives me nuts is if, as I'm emptying the clothes from the hamper into the sorter, I find a non-clothing item in with the dirty clothes, like a toy. If it's something that won't be ruined by being put through the washer, I will throw it in with the clothes. If it can't be put through the washer then I will wipe it down with my favorite anti-bacterial wipes.

I want everyone to know that I'm willing to let you know how weird I am if I can just get one person to change the way they do laundry. Just think about what kind of germs are getting on your clean clothes when you put them in a basket that had dirty clothes in it. We must stop butt germs from spreading.

Update on Drastic Measures

During this week I have been totally organizing Hayden's room. It's been pretty easy since it's almost empty! He has slowly been earning his books and toys back and has done a good job at putting things away.

I had organized his room before, but it was back before I actually had some decent organizing skills so things weren't working very well. Now I feel like I have a lot more knowledge of how to organize in a way that will really work. In his closet there were two storage units with drawers in them. They didn't fit well in the small closet and were inconvenient to get stuff out and put stuff in them. I decided to put shelves in the closet instead and then buy containers to put various toys in. I thought about getting the type of shelves that are custom fit to the closet, but I decided against that. I would rather have something that can be easily put in and taken out.

I found the perfect shelves. I needed two sets of them. The first store I went to only had one, so I didn't buy it because I was worried I couldn't find another one and I wanted two. So the next day I went to another store and they only had one. I bought it, hoping the first store still had the one they had the day before. I drove across town and luckily they still had it. By the time I got home it was bedtime for the kids so they went to bed. I couldn't stand it that I was going to have to wait until morning to put the shelves in, so I decided to do it anyway. I put them together in the family room and then went in Hayden's room to put them in the closet. I couldn't get them both in. I did measure them so I knew they would fit perfectly, it was just that they couldn't both be assembled and then put in. So I had to take one of them apart and reassemble it inside the closet. The funny thing is Hayden slept through the whole thing. The next morning I asked him if he'd seen his closet and he said, "How did you do that while I was asleep?" I told him he must have been very tired and didn't hear me.

Yesterday and today I went container shopping. I love shopping for containers. I don't think you can have too many. I found some very inexpensive containers and I bought a lot. I came home and put them where I planned on putting them and Hayden helped me decide the best places to put his few toys. He likes helping decide where things should go. I think letting him help in the organization process will help him keep his things put away. I still need to go get a few more containers today. I went to the store at 11:30 (they open at 9:00) and the doors were locked. They had a sign up saying they would be open at 12:00. So I went and ran a few other errands and then went back at 12:45. The doors were still locked and they had a sign up saying they would open at 2:00. Potential customers were getting all riled up outside so I left. I am going to head over there after Mike gets home from work and try to finish up my shopping.

Since I am so excited about getting his room organized, I am really tempted to just put all of his toys back in. I am getting tired of them cluttering up other areas of the house. I can't decide if I should put them back in his room, letting him get away without the full repurcussions of having such a messy room but giving me a much needed feeling of accomplishment by having the room done, or if I should continue only letting him have one toy and two books per day, but have the feeling of stress on me for having other areas of my house messy because of it. I am seriously leaning toward just putting it all back so I can feel relaxed. If I do that I will have to have a talk with him telling him why I'm putting it back, but that if he starts to leave stuff out again I will take it. It would be much easier to just take a few things out than to keep it all out. The more I type about it the more I'm trying to talk myself into just putting it all back, which I know wouldn't be the best thing for Hayden, but it would be the best thing for me. Oh, the delimmas of parenthood.

I will post some pictures of the room when it's all done, but I need to do it when everything's back in because taking pictures of a bunch of empty containers just won't work.

By the way, I bought Mike's birthday present today and his birthday is over a week away. Usually I buy him something on his birthday, so I'm saving myself a lot of stress by getting it early. I can't tell you what it is because he sometimes reads this, but I can tell you that after playing with it for a while I want one. He's going to be home within a half an hour so I'd better put it away.

Wow!

That's all I can say about the Superbowl. What an exciting game.

I am happy that I survived our party without having a heart attack, either from the food or from the anxiety and excitement of the game.

Everyone at our party wanted the Giants to win, even though we didn't think they could pull it off. One guy that was there is from New York and he was so stressed out the whole time. Only one person invited wanted the Patriots, but he ended up not being able to come because of illness. I was secretly happy that he couldn't come because he is very rowdy, especially when he's drinking, and he wouldn't have been able to contain the F-bombs during and after the game when his team got beat. I mean come on, is football really that important that you have to get so riled up during a game? Okay, I admit that it is. I only wish we had an NFL team in our city. But if we did we'd probably have to use our childrens' college funds for season tickets so it's best that we don't. We'll just have to live with watching it on TV.

I'm not even going to talk about the alleged cheating that the losing coach has been involved in over the years, except to say that I hope he doesn't get away with it without some repurcussions. What a loser in every sense of the word.

Update to Drastic Measures

Yesterday when Hayden got home from school he didn't seem too concerned that his room was almost empty (I didn't quite make it before he got home). He came in and wanted to see what I was doing. I decided that since I was emptying the room I might as well move the furniture, since it was empty, and clean the walls and vacuum really good. Carson helped me remove the remaining toys out.


At first Hayden seemed kind of excited that his room was clean. But then it hit him. He had no toys and no books. He started to cry. He told me it wasn't fair. I told him it wasn't fair that I had to spend a day or two cleaning his room only to have him come along and mess it all up again. He agreed that that wasn't fair either.


After he got over his crying spell, I let him pick one toy to have back. He picked his puppet theater. Of course that contains more than one piece, so we decided on a good spot to keep the puppet theater and the puppets. Before the puppets were kept in a basket in one of his drawers and the puppet theater was kept in the top of his closet, which meant that he didn't play with it much. We kept the puppets where they were before and moved the puppet theater down where he could get it. He was so excited that he did several puppet shows for us. If I can find my camera (it has been missing for several days) I will take a picture of the puppet theater. Several years ago I got a brilliant idea for a puppet theater, so for his birthday I made one for him. Okay, I didn't really make it. I designed it and picked out the fabric and my mom sewed it. I don't have a sewing machine. I'm sure I could have made it, though.


Here's where I have to confess something. I do not like watching my kids do puppet shows. When it comes to putting on a puppet show, they are not very imaginative. For instance, one of Hayden's shows last night consisted of a doctor selling markers. He had the doctor on his right hand. Then he would go through all of the puppets asking them if they wanted to buy a marker. There would be a pause between each one while he switched the puppets on his left hand. After he went through all the puppets the last one finally bought the marker. But it didn't end there. He went through all the markers and all the puppets. I almost dozed off. But when it was over we all clapped like it was the best puppet show we had ever seen. He thought it was great.

Back to the story. After he was done playing with the puppet theater he did not want to put it away. I started to argue with him about it, telling him I was going to count to five, or that he'd better get in there and pick it up now, but then I backed off. I just said, "That's okay. I don't care if you don't pick it up. If you don't pick it up I'll just take it away again and you'll have to earn it back." After a few minutes he quietly went in and put it away. We're starting out with baby steps and hopefully it will work.

Before bed I let him pick two books to put back in his room. He was too tired to pick them so I picked them. He read them to me and then we put them on his shelf. I'm going to let him pick one toy and two books a day. If he only got to pick one book a day it would take forever to get all of his books back in. Besides, this way he can read them to me and by the time they are all back he will have read them all.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but for a five-year-old he is an amazing reader. He even read a book to his preschool class when he was in preschool. I'm totally guessing here but I think he is probably reading on a 2nd grade level. He can read almost as good as Carson, who is in second grade and is reading above grade level. It's really fun to hear him read. Yes, I am bragging. He may be a messy mischief, but he's a great reader.

Back to the story, again. I keep getting sidetracked. This morning as he was getting ready for school, he realized that he didn't have a room full of choices for Show and Tell. He started crying and telling me it wasn't fair. We talked about the situation again, and I told him he could take a puppet for Show and Tell. He didn't want to take a puppet, so he isn't participating in Show and Tell today. Also this morning he tried to sneak two toys back in his room, but I caught him. He wasn't too happy about that. I'm going to have to check his room every day and make sure he's not sneaking things in.

He has access to most of his toys because we don't have a lot of space to put them. They are distributed throughout the house. They are: in the linen closet, in the coat closet, in Carson's room, in the hallway between the bedrooms (two drawer units), and downstairs behind the exercise equipment. I would have preferred to put them somewhere where he can't see them, but there isn't anywhere available. Maybe it's good he can see them. He can see what he's missing out on.

I have to say I think we're off to a pretty good start so far. He's not too happy about the situation, but I think it's really making him think about things, and I don't think it has traumatized him too much. He has to learn some time, and it needs to be sooner rather than later before I have a clutter-induced breakdown.