Trying... very, very trying.

I may have flipped out at my children this morning.  No screaming (my head hurt too much to do that to myself) but I did use *that* voice.  You know the one.  Even if you aren't sure I bet your kids know it when you use it. Anyway, I threatened them with "No Wii. No Computer.  No Board games. No Asking to borrow the iPod... until you clean up this mess!"

The mess I indicated was an assortment of junk spewing forth from every corner of the room and my pet hate... their kids chairs that they had simply tipped over to get them out of their way rather than putting them back at their table.

They are still at the stage where a big cleaning job is too daunting and they can't do it without smaller instructions so I gave the big boys a job each to get started and asked Monkey to grab his brothers uniform off the floor (because you cannot stay in your clothes any longer than is absolutely necessary so you dump them on the floor) and put it in the bathroom.  He grabbed the shirt and wandered off towards the bathroom, I knew the door was closed and he couldn't open it but figured he'd do what his brothers do and just dump it outside the door.  A few seconds pass and I can hear sobbing coming from the other end of the house.  I go off to investigate and find Monkey sobbing to himself about the closed door and desperately trying to feed the shirt inch by inch through the gap under the door.

Of course, if he wants to finish a job properly then who am I to discourage that!  I opened that door and he put the shirt in the hamper and trundled off to find some more cleaning to do... until he got distracted.

Isn't he all grown up?  This is a shirt that Dragon picked out for his second birthday and wore it every chance he got, we had to FORCE him to pass it on to a friend once it was starting to get a bit risky trying to get it off at bath time.  Now it is Monkey's shirt.  He doesn't have the same attachment to it but I love seeing him in it.  He was being rather a comedian on the day this was taken... the phrase of the day for him was a giggled "I jus' jokin' you" accompanied by this funny face.