Playing House

The kids have been experimenting with playing house lately. Allie with her baby, and Jackson with Miss L. ("you be the dad and I'll be the princess"). We've also started playing more reality-house/learning-how-to-work house. Documentation is required so I can remember these good ol' days when working was still fun.

Beside her one household chore (putting silverware in slots), Allie has been helping lots with wall cleaning. Unfortunately it's due to her coloring rampage. Although I appreciate her art, we've decided to confiscate all writing utensils because I'm not quite sure how to get marker out of a wall. She started with chalk, which is hard to do more than say "no no" because it comes off so easily. But she has progressively moved to pencil, crayons, and pens. I finally started putting her in time out yesterday, since she didn't seem to mind the cleaning aspect. She did seem to know a lot about time out, being the observant little sister--and dutifully screamed just like Jackson. Hopefully, we can continue the love of wall cleaning, and keep her art consistently on appropriate surfaces.

Jackson has taken on floor cleaning. We happen to have dark blue carpet, inherited from the last tenant. We are so grateful he left all the rugs for us, because it meant we didn't have to invest a bucket load of money in covering "80% of the floors" (as specified in our contract). Funny enough, the dark blue carpet shows more dirt, crumbs and grass than white carpet. So, we vacuum at least once a day. We're grateful for a small area to vacuum and a great vacuum, and most recently we're grateful for a third vacuumer! Jackson has taken the chore on with vigor. It looks to be a fabulous muscle builder for him. Our electric bill may double this month, but it's well worth having a happy helper.

I caught this video of both the kids the other day. Allie had just finished rocking her baby, and Jackson was pausing his vacuuming (getting ready to move to the hose). You can hear my persuasiveness as I coax Allie into continued rocking and I'm so glad I did. Oh my heart melts when I see her do this. She totally picked it up herself. My favorite is the singing with the squat rock. Ah! The best part is she still loves to cuddle up and let me do this to her. So fun.

Excited to see what other chores the kiddos pick up... unfortunately for Mark, I think dishes are a few years out.