In my never-ending quest to figure out the best way to fully, er, appreciate my child’s 2-year-oldness, I tried a new trick yesterday. When Z plays in his playroom, he turns into a little hurricane and everything ends up on the floor. Note the chaos behind him (coupled with his cute “who me?” fake smile):
Getting him to help me clean up is a bit of a challenge. He’ll usually help put away a few things (especially if I turn it into a “my turn/your turn” game), but he quickly gets distracted by other toys and forgets what we’re doing. He’ll pull out the drawer to put away his fire engine and suddenly notice his rocket car sitting there in the drawer. So the fire engine is put away, the rocket car comes out.
Yesterday he barely helped at all. While I was putting things away, he happily played with his garbage truck and Mr. Potato Head. When I was done, I said, “Well look, I cleaned up all by myself! Time to put the gate up.” Z and I left the play room and I put the baby gate up – locking him OUT instead of in. I stepped over the gate and sat in the middle of the play room floor with a book. Z stood at the gate looking in, obviously confused. He said, “Play music bus!” and I said, “Oh, but the music bus is in here, in the play room I cleaned up all by myself! I’m enjoying the clean play room since I worked so hard on it.” He said, “Play music player! Listen Jai Ho!” and I said, “Oh, but the music player is in here too.” He said, “Play violin?” and I said, “Oh that’s a fun toy to play with. But it’s in here too.”
Z stood there and watched me for a few minutes, clearly figuring something out in his head. Then he ran to the living room and opened up the drawer full of his little knick-knacks. He took them all out and put them on the floor. He grabbed some plastic containers from the kitchen and put them on the floor too. Then he announced, “Zachary clean up!” and put the knick-knacks and plastic containers away.
Another reason why I love that boy.
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