Trolls

I'm sure all of you with kids are aware of how challenging it can be to help your children keep their rooms clean.  It's difficult for kids to find the motivation or the belief that cleanliness is an important thing.  Many of you know what it's like to have a bedroom shared by two young girls.  One age nine, one age five.  It's a pretty tough prospect to ensure that the rate at which things are put away exceeds the rate at which they are strewn around the room.

Now imagine if the nine-year-old was blind and the five-year-old had no arms.  Entropy defined!  That's the situation in Lexi's and Sophi's room.  Christi will spend a couple of hours deep cleaning it with them. Graci, Cali and Jess will help get everything picked up.  No matter how clean it gets, you can guarantee that 24 hours later (at the LONGEST) there will be about eight million items scattered about the floor.  

There is always lots of doll stufff.  Often cereal or crackers or something edible and slowly crumbleable.  We have this container of craft beads that for some ridiculous reason we have never moved out of their room that gets knocked over at least once a week.  Every so often this tips over and scatters literally hundreds of beads around the floor.  It is virtually impossible for Lex and Soph to clean these themselves.  Pillows, blankets and stuffed animals from the beds are common as well.  (Being a man, I still don't understand the necessity of 18 decorative pillows on a bed, but hey, like I said, I'm just a man...;)

Probably the hardest thing about this situation is how challenging it is for Lexi to navigate her room when it's in this state.  Particularly when she wakes up in the night to use the bathroom.  She groggily stumbles through a variable and veritable obstacle course.  When we tuck them in at night, Christi and I try to at least clear a path from Lexi's bunk bed ladder to the door of their room in hopes that our sweet Lex can make it out unimpeded.  

Last night after the girls were already asleep, Christi called out to me, 'Look in here!"  I peeked in the room and saw rocks all over the floor.  Like, well over a hundred of them.  1/2 inch to 1 inch diameter rocks.  All over.  What?!?  We cleaned them all up and made sure Lexi could get out of the room without stepping on something painful.  

The next morning I asked, "Who put the rocks on the floor in your room?"

Both girls got BIG smiles on their faces and said, "We did!!!" with great gusto.

"Where did you get them?"

From the rocks at the bottom of the deck stairs."  (We have a nice gravel path that leads from these stairs to the grass in the back yard.)

Me, obviously not in touch with little-girl logic, "Why did you spread them all over your floor?"

Another big round of grins:  "We were playing they were trolls!"

Forunately I had seen Frozen and therefore understood this concept.  What cute little girls.  We had a small lesson about leaving the gravel where it's supposed to be:)

-Dad