mr. clean

Our little Liam has become a cleaning machine.  The toddler helpfulness stage is in full swing these days and he insists on making sure that there is ‘a place for everything and everything in its place.’  With our busy work schedules lately my mom has been coming over a lot to help us out and Liam is very quick to let Grandma know when she has not put something away correctly or washed his hands according to his liking.  Most of the time this is great, like when he puts his own dirty clothes in the hamper.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he won’t soon outgrow this new affinity for household chores, although I can see it getting out of control.

The other day I was cleaning windows and he ran up, grabbed my hand and instructed me to bring the windex.  He then lead me to his room where he pointed out the smudges on his mirror.  “Good idea” I said as I began to clean it.  But no, he wanted to do it himself.  He spent a good 20 minutes scrubbing and re-scrubbing the mirror.

Then today, we were in a rush to get out the door so I neglected to do all of our lunch dishes immediately after eating (gasp!).  As I forced him to put his shoes and jacket on he threw a stomping fit about the fact that his high chair tray was still dirty and there were peas on the floor.  He kept running back to try and clean up but I was already running late so I told him we would have to do it when we came back. 

I guess I am getting what I deserve.  I’m sure this is what I look like to Phil half the time and he calmly indulges my obsessive cleaning tendencies.