I’ve been working with Ryan and Cole for a few weeks now, on cleaning up their playroom, and organizing everything. It is amazing at times how two boys can be so messy. We started with the bookcase. I took out every single book- all 500 of them (so it seems) and kept the ones that are age appropriate, and packed up the baby ones.
Then we started in on the cars, trucks, trains, and anything else with four wheels. Then I started finding tire treads everywhere. Evidently, Cole likes to take the tread off, and then throw all of them behind larger objects in the playroom.
Every toy has many other little parts, and trying to find all the parts to the toys to put them away is taking so long. Cole has been practicing cutting with scissors. There are always scraps of paper everywhere that makes the floor look like Times Square after New Year’s. Add to that, Ryan now uses the playroom as his “classroom” to play school. Everytime I pick up a marker, or put a book away, he tells me he needs that- those are his teaching materials. He really does have a class too. He’s recruited the neighborhood children, and after they are all home from real school, they are now assembling in our playroom to play school.
The room is a wreck, and on Friday I finally had some more time to work with the boys and I was determined we were finally going to get the playroom clean and organized. All was going well until five minutes into it, when I discovered “spit balls” all over the place. When I asked what they were, Ryan said that was his science experiment- he was making paper.
I told the boys that there was to be no more water in the playroom. Then I uttered those five words- those five words I heard growing up: “This room is a pigsty!” The boys looked at me. The rest of the interaction went like this:
COLE: Mommy, what is a pigsty?
ME: A pigsty is where pigs live, and it is dirty, messy, and gross. Just like this room.
COLE: But we aren’t pigs- we are boys.
ME: But your room looks like where pigs live.
RYAN: Pigs live on the farm, in mud. There’s no mud in here.
ME: Yes, but their sty is where they live on the farm, and there probably is mud in here- we just haven’t found it yet.
RYAN: When did you see a pigsty?
ME: I see a pigsty every time I walk in this room.
RYAN: Pigs like to be dirty.
COLE: Yea, pigs like to be dirty, and we like our playroom.
ME: Well I don’t, and we aren’t going to keep this room like a pigsty anymore. We are going to clean it up, until we are done.
RYAN and COLE (silence and then): OINK, OINK!
On Saturday we worked all day, and we made a lot of progress. After the second trash bag was filled, I realized I am a full-fledged pigsty expert. And I remembered this: (watch at the 3 minute mark to 4 minutes)
Clearly, I’m following the universally-accepted-standard-mother sayings. When we start in on the pigsty room again, I”ll just have to step it up a notch and tell the boys, “if you think this room is going to stay a pigsty, you have another thing coming.”
I am sure the response will be the same: oinks, and they will probably ask what is the other thing coming is. 🙂