It's been awhile. . .

Last night Dustin and I went out on a marathon date -- shopping for a new shirt for him, dinner, then we met up to play laser tag with some super rockin' friends, dessert afterwards. . . and then Dustin decided to go watch UFC and play Rock Band with some friends and I stayed home to crash. I got on to blog and ended up searching everywhere for my camera, gave up and decided just to watch some TV. I was yawning about every 5 seconds when I realized that I was forcing myself to stay up because the house was so quiet. In the end, I had to give up the quiet for sleep. Which is good because Dustin got home at 4 am. So guess who got up with the kids this morning?

So since I can't find the camera, I'll save the picture stories another time and tell you how much I hate cleaning my kids rooms. About once a month, I go through all their toys and make sure everything still works and is sorted properly. Each room takes me a whole day -- probably because Sadie can pull everything out faster than I can put it away, so not much gets done while she's awake. I almost had Ellie's room done on Wednesday when Sadie woke up from her nap, found the sack full of garbage and broken toys, decided it was a purse and dragged it all over the house, dumping trash everywhere.

The depressing part is, by Saturday it was starting to get messy again, so I asked her to clean it up. It was torture of course. She sort of sat there pouting until I broke out the Mama drama. I believe I pulled something like this:

"Do you think I like to clean you room? NO! So why do I do it? Because I love you." Yes, I had to supply my own answers because Ellie was laying on the ground writhing in pain at the notion of cleaning her room. "So you know what it says to me when you don't you clean your room when I ask you? That you don't love me."

Oh yeah, I was that horrible at the guilt. And the room got cleaned.

Thursday was Nate's room -- which is so much easier than Ellie's room. I love that boys don't have Polly Pocket clothes, and barbie shoes, and dress up, and doll house dolls, and baby doll clothes. . . He basically has 3 main categories -- trains, cars and action figures. So I tell Nate we're going to clean up his room. "I don't want to clean my room, that's so boring. Boring. Boring. Boring." Yeah Nate, I know it's boring, I don't find it fun either. So I drag him back to his room and he just sits there. I ask him to help me clean. "No, I just watch you clean my room."

Now why do we torture ourselves into thinking they will help us cleaning willingly and gladly? For instance, a few months ago we told the kids they couldn't have dinner until they cleaned Nate's room. Nate sat around and did nothing and Ellie cried for 2 hours, "We're going to DIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE." Finally I had to go in and supervise the cleaning. It took less than ten minutes.

Afterwards Nate was washing his hands and he tells Dustin, "This make mommy happy. Mommy make me happy clean my room." Then he comes out and hugs and kisses me, "Thank you helping me clean my room mommy." And that is why I clean his room for him. Even if it is boring.