I don’t quite know why I’m surprised when I come home to find things a mess.

I mean, okay, I was a kid once upon a time, and heaven knows I had enough trouble keeping things clean.  I remember at one point in college that I had a path from my door to my bed and desk, and the rest of the room was a disaster.

The Monster’s messes are constrained far more than this – usually, it’s just his toys scattered about in the playroom, or the foam flooring tossed around on the living room floor while he’s putting the alphabet/shape/number pieces back into them.  It is pretty much the same thing day after day – I clean things up in the evening, and he makes a new mess when he gets home from school.

What does surprise me is that he’ll often clean them all up on his own as well, without being badgered, when he feels like doing that.  (I never did that.)  If the books are pulled off the little bookshelf in our living room – his little brother’s favorite activity with books – he’ll often put them back without being prompted.  It seems like the only messes he’ll tolerate are the ones he makes himself.

And badgering doesn’t usually help, for the record.  It has to be on his terms or he’s not doing it.  So much for not being ‘normal’, hmmm?

Ideally, I’d want to get him to understand why it’s important to keep things neat and clean, but his receptive language isn’t really up to the task.  Given that, I’m still trying to think of how I can make it more fun, to make it something he wants to do, aside from outright bribery…

Just a quick personal note – I’m going to be at a bonspiel (that’s a curling tournament for those who don’t recognize the term) starting tomorrow, so my updates will probably be a bit more spotty than usual.  I’ll be back to a normalish schedule on Sunday evening when it’s over.