Clean House

"Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing."  ~Phyllis Diller

All you moms know what I'm talking about, the endless chore of keeping a house in reasonable running order while the tiny hurricane that you gave birth to is everywhere and into everything.  Many days I just give up and let the little disaster baby do her worst.

Her daddy, however, is great at getting cleaning done, and we have been making an effort, ever so slightly, to get Maeve more involved in the process.  And I am hoping and praying she grows up to resemble her dad's cleanliness and not mine! 

I like things clean, but have been slowly learning this by dint of having a husband who likes things clean and helps them get that way.  My natural state looks like a freshman dorm room, with ankle-deep laundry on the floor and every available space cluttered with anything and everything.  In becoming a wife, I endeavored to curb my slothful ways, but old habits die hard, with a vengeance.

Maeve's daddy likes a house  not only clean, but organized, and as symmetrical as possible. If he could have a little Lego universe, with every line of bricks parallel to the ones above and below, his heart would burst with happiness.  He and I have worked out, as we go along in this marriage, who will clean what, but now he has a minion.

Oh yes, he is teaching Maeve to be neat.  We are finally getting through to her about putting things away, and she is very good at knowing where things go.  I can hand her an item in her bedroom, and say, "Can you put this shoe where it goes?" and she will jog out to the living room and put it on the shelf.  She doesn't have enough focus to put all her toys away at the end of the day, but we'll work up to it.  For now, just putting a toy away and not immediately getting it back out or taking out three other toys is pretty good.

I push this button?