Messy Bedrooms

You know, I can get Sam to clean his room now, but when he was 4, there wasn't any chance of it. Sometimes I could trick him into making a game of it, but usually I had to go clean it myself. I don't know why I'm expecting Awyn to suddenly turn into a clean-room girl. I just love it when she flops down on the floor, couch, or her bed and declares herself so so sleepy, she can't possibly help clean right now. Then she takes her master disaster skills into her brothers room and destroys it too.

I need to weed out more of her toys. She has too many, that's part of the problem. I just have such guilt when I put toys up - because I know I'll forget about them, and typically she'll outgrow them before I pull them out again. It happened with Sam so very often. And then I'll have guilt. Guilt that I put a beloved toy away to be forgotten. Guilt that I'll now probably have to throw it away because it's not quite nice enough to find a new home for.

I have toy guilt. I can't stand the idea that a poor toy won't be loved, or was loved and then abandoned. I still try to tuck Awyn's kitty in with her at night, and she's soooo moved on from beloved kitty. Kitty became a fast favorite. Daddy found Kitty at Alco, in Alpine Texas. He selected this lovely brown kitty for our little girl, and she loved it so much it was hard to pry it away from her to pay for it. A couple months later when we realized the depth of her obsession, we hastened back to Alco and bought their entire stock out - so we would have back-ups. I did NOT want to be that mother on my favorite mommy bulletin board posting a "have you seen any of these - desperate!" search for my baby's lovey. The stash of kitties remained for a couple years, untapped. Until the move. I left Kitty in a motel room on our way back from our house-hunting trip. When we got home, I broke into the stash, took the tags off New Kitty, and had it in her hot little hands before she could squeal for it. Suddenly, she quit dragging that cat with her. Inseparable no longer. Mama Kitty, as she had become known by then, now tends to occupy the bottom of her stuffed animal stash. I do admit, when she misplaced her little bear the other night, to tricking her into accepting Mama Kitty instead, and I smiled.

My little girl is growing up so fast, I can't hardly stand it. Except that I'm really looking forward to her cleaning her own room.