Purging the Playroom!

Had I thought, I would have taken before and after pictures of this room. However, I didn't have the foresight to see this purging/organizing effort as a blog post, so all I have are the "after" pictures.

Welcome to my children's playroom. Please note, that I only have two incredibly spoiled children, I do not run a daycare (though we definitely have enough toys in our house to do so). Prior to December 2012, this room served as our guest room. After Christmas last year, we removed the "real" furniture, and moved the majority of the kid's toys to this room. It served to clear the toy clutter from the living room, and concentrated most of the toy mess to this one area of our house. At that time, we purchased the cloth bins and sorted the toys by category into the bins.




There are two bins filled with playdoh and playdoh accessories. There are two bins filled with various cars and trucks. A bin full of coloring books and crayons, another bin that holds play dishes and plastic food. A bin filled with little animals, a bin filled with Little People and their accessories, and a bin that holds various bottles, diapers, and other items for my daughter's dolls. Tucked underneath the train/lego table are three plastic bins full of legos. The toy box (which you can't see in the pictures) holds all the random toys that don't fit into one of the binned categories.

Organization of this room has been an ongoing battle for us. It seems that every time we get this room organized, someone has a birthday, and another influx of toys takes over. Last weeks purge resulted in a stack of items to be recycled, a trash bag full of broken toys to be disposed of, and another trash bag of toys that my children have either outgrown, or simply don't play with, to be given away.

The huge difficulty in cutting back on the amount of toys in our house comes from the fact that I can't seem to find time when my children aren't home to go through their toys without them. In their minds EVERY toy in our house is their FAVORITE toy, despite the fact that they haven't played with it in months or even years.

As discretely as possible, I removed the two-plus trash bags full of toys from the room. I could easily remove an equal amount again if my children hadn't been present.

Unfortunately, even though there are a ton of toys in this room, there are still toys in other areas of our house. At present, the kids share a bedroom, and that too is over run with even more toys. There are still toys in our living room, and the outdoor toys are stored in the garage. My goal, is to continue to pare down the amount of toys that they have to a more manageable amount.

As their interests become more defined, I'm trying to remove those items that are no longer used, and focus their toys more around their interests. My daughter's interests are primarily focused on her dolls at this time, as well as craft projects. My son's interests are primarily focused on cars/trucks, and the Fisher Price Little People.

I'm quite resigned to the fact that battling the amount of toys in our house will be a never-ending process until their teen years, but until that time I'll continue to wage war on the toy clutter!

A New Era Begins - My Daughter's First Day of Kindergarten!

Yesterday marked the first day of a new era for our family, my daughter is now officially a kindergartner! The past few weeks have been riddled with excitement and anxiety for me, my husband, and especially my daughter (my two year old has been quite oblivious to the whole matter, though he has declared that he will be attending college before he goes to kindergarten himself). My daughter's fears have revolved around things like riding the school bus, how to buy lunch in the cafeteria, and exactly how much homework she will be given as a kindergartner, oh... and the follow up question, "Mommy, what IS homework anyway?". My own fears have been more centered on adjusting work schedules to accommodate having one child in school and another in daycare, figuring out how the before care works at our school, how much school lunches cost, will she feel challenged enough by the curriculum, and the rest of the minutia that goes with sending your first born off to her first day of "real" school.

Adjusting our work schedules was the part of our first day of school preparation that took the most thought. My workday will be moved back an hour; rather than starting at 8am, I'll now be starting at 7am. This will allow me to get out of work, pick my son up from daycare, and hopefully be home in time to get my daughter off the school bus. Conversely, my husband will now be going to work slightly later, to allow him time to drop my daughter off at the school's before care program, and then take my son to day care (previously I've always been the one to do day care drop off). My son's day at daycare will be shortened, as he'll be dropped off slightly later than he's accustomed to, and picked up an hour earlier than he was before. Once our changes to our work schedules were approved, the rest took little thought on my part, it was just a matter of calming my daughter's tiny nerves.

She did amazing when we dropped her off for school, she was excited to see her friends, and start her new school year. She quickly gave us hugs, and said goodbye as she ran off to her classroom. Aside from a hiccup with the school bus and her drop off after school, she had an amazing day! She was excited to tell me all about her new friends, what she had for lunch, and how much fun she had at recess!

Unfortunately, I'm already "one of those parents", since after the minor mishap with the school bus, I stopped at the school office, and then called the transit company that buses the children to and from school to inquire/complain about the issue. At least she had a great day otherwise, and hopefully the bus situation will be resolved by this afternoon when she comes home!

Milestone Reached - My Daughter's Last Day of Daycare

My daughter reaches yet another milestone today.  Today is her last day of daycare.  While part of me rejoices in the fact that I will only have one child remaining in daycare, the other part of me cries knowing that my little girl is growing up.  It’s a bittersweet time indeed.

For the past year, my daughter has only been in daycare two days a week, and has spent the remaining three work days in the care of my mother-in-law.  This pattern of care was established to accommodate my daughter’s pre-school schedule, and we maintained it this summer until this week. 

Our family is going on vacation next week, since our daycare will be closed for their summer holiday, so we’ll all be going to camp for the week.  During the two weeks following our vacation, my daughter will go to my in-laws during the day, and the next week kindergarten starts.  It’s hard to believe that she’ll be going to kindergarten in less than a month, it seems like just yesterday we were driving home from the hospital with our newborn!

She’s already saddened at the prospect of no longer seeing her daycare friends, and nervous about the upcoming changes that will occur when she starts school.  It’s been incredibly helpful, transitionally, that she attended pre-school in the same school that she’ll be going to kindergarten in.  She already knows most of her kindergarten class, since they all went to pre-school together.  I know that she will thrive once she gets back into the routine of school, but until then we’re all a little nervous about the transition.

For my husband and I, it will mean another shuffling of our work schedules to accommodate the school day, and the juggling of children to two different places.  It also means that we’ll no longer be paying for daycare for my daughter, and THAT is huge for us!!  My son’s schedule will be flexed with a later drop off time at daycare, so that my husband can get my daughter to school, and an earlier pick up time so that I can be home when our daughter gets off the school bus.  It will take time for all of us to adjust to this new schedule, though I’m sure we’ll adapt to the scheduling change much faster than I will adapt to having my baby start kindergarten!

A Weekend of One on One Time!

This past weekend was a "Girls Weekend" for my daughter and I, and a "Boys Weekend" for my husband and son.  My husband and son left Friday night for a weekend of guy time at my in-law's camp, and my daughter and I stayed home. 

My daughter had a birthday party to attend on Saturday afternoon, which was the original reasoning behind our family separation for the weekend.  However, we opted to maximize this time apart and spend some much needed one-on-one time with each of the children.  My daughter was beyond thrilled with the prospect of having Mommy to herself for the entire weekend, and my son (being only two-years-old) was rather oblivious to the matter. 

It amazes me how different my children are when they are apart.  I had grand plans for all the things my daughter and I would do, and while we did do many of them, she was most happy with the fact that she could play alone in her room and be uninterrupted by her little brother.  Likewise, little brother took advantage of his Daddy-time by playing quietly by himself without the interruption of his big sister. 

The boys left around 6pm Friday evening, and while I was ready to kick off our weekend of "girl time", my daughter quickly disappeared to her room to play with her babies.  Since she was content, and enjoying herself, I curled up with a book and waited, hoping that she would return shortly.  After an hour, or so, she did emerge from her room, and requested that we cuddle on the couch and eat popcorn.  Since this was her weekend, I quickly obliged, and she quickly fell asleep mid snacking.  Thus ended our first evening of our girls' weekend.

We awoke Saturday morning, ate breakfast, and she disappeared outside to play in the sand.  I attempted to join her, and was given an evil eye and told that I could go do something else.  She wanted to play by herself.  I was a bit disheartened, but recalled that I myself am always excited about doing things uninterrupted while I'm home alone.  I wrapped the birthday gift for the afternoon party, and enjoyed a cup of coffee as I watched her through the window.  The smile that alighted her face proved to me that she was enjoying her break by herself.  After a short time though, I was forced to call her inside so that she could shower and get cleaned up for the birthday party.

We attended the party, and she had a great time catching up with her pre-school friends that she hadn't seen in a few weeks (some since school ended, and others since the baseball season ended).  After the party we made our way to the city, went out to dinner, and the rest of the night was her choice of activities.  I found it highly amusing that after dinner the one thing that she wanted to do was to go to the dollar store.  In her eyes, the dollar store is the most amazing place on earth!  After walking the aisles of the dollar store, we went to look at the critters at Petco, and then went to Wal-mart.  During our shopping excursion, we picked up the new American Girl movie, "Saige Paints the Sky", and some snacks to enjoy while we were watching it. 

When we got home, we snuggled up in my bed with our snacks, and the movie.  The snacks remained untouched, and my daughter only saw about 10 minutes of the movie before she fell asleep.  Moving the snacks to the nightstand, so as not to have them crushed up in my bedsheets, I tucked her in tight, and shut off the movie.  She looked so tiny snuggled up in my bed, and it made me realize that despite being five-years-old, and defiantly independent, she's still such a little girl.

The next morning, I was awoken by my little angel pouncing on me, and demanding that we finish watching the movie while we eat breakfast in bed.  I turned the movie on, and made my way downstairs to make the requested toast.  We snuggled up and finished the movie, which was a really great movie!  I really like the American Girl movies, for the mere fact that I don't have to worry about there being anything inappropriate in them.  They are nice wholesome movies, and my daughter loves ANYTHING associated with American Girl.

My plan for Sunday was to take my daughter to the movie theater.  Having never been to the movie theater before, she was beyond excited to go!  Both my children loved the original "Despicable Me" movie, so "Despicable Me 2" was an obvious choice for us.  The movie theater experience was so exciting for her!  As we sat in the theater prior to the movie starting she was inundating me with questions about how everything worked.  When the lights went down, she could hardly contain herself!  It turned out that the sequel was just as enjoyable for us as the original movie (if not more so).  We had a wonderful time!

On our way home, my daughter confessed that she really missed Daddy, and little brother.  I assured her that they would be home shortly after we got home, and she sighed with relief.  When they got home, she ran and hugged them both, and told them about her "best weekend ever", then quickly declared that "next time we have a girls' weekend, it should only be for one day, so she doesn't have to miss them so much!"  I agree, it was a great weekend with my little girl, but I did miss my boys!!

The Tooth Fairy Debacle - What's the going rate for the Tooth Fairy?

 It happened, and it happened without advanced notice, my five year old lost her first tooth!  A monumental event in the life of a child, my daughter was overjoyed to join the ranks of her pre-school classmates that had already lost their first teeth!

As a parent, I was thrilled for my daughter, and saddened for myself as she met yet another milestone that marked the end of her baby years.  Together we cheered, we danced, and we celebrated the loss of the pearly white baby tooth!

Then as we were describing the Tooth Fairy process to her; how she would put this tiny tooth under her pillow at bedtime, and the Tooth Fairy would sneak in after she was asleep and replace it with... with what?!?!? I was ill-prepared, I hadn't expected a visit from the Tooth Fairy for at least a few more months, and yet in a matter of hours we had gone from discovering that her tooth was loose, to it being held proudly above her head in her little fingers like the torch of the Statue of Liberty!  Thank goodness for Facebook and the instant access to countless friends and relatives with small children!  As soon as my daughter deposited her tooth in my hand and went on her merry way to play outside, I set to work and asked the question on Facebook, "What IS the going rate for the Tooth Fairy?!?!?!" 

The responses I received were varied, and ranged from $1 to $20 for the first tooth!  Yikes, it seems that some children have VERY generous Tooth Fairies!  Knowing my own daughter, I know that if she received $20, or even $5, for the first tooth that she would fully expect that the Tooth Fairy would either continue with that amount, or even increase it with subsequent teeth.  The dilemma ensued... How much was this tooth worth? 

Whispered conversations were had, between my husband and I, as our daughter's bedtime approached.  Not wanting to set precedent of too high of a rate of return on baby teeth, we opted to have the Tooth Fairy leave a dollar as a reward for this prize tooth.  After she was soundly asleep, the Tooth Fairy slipped into her room and replaced that tiny little tooth with a dollar bill, and the deal was sealed.

All that night I feared that she would be disappointed with the Tooth Fairy's offerings.  Had the Tooth Fairy left enough?  Those fears were swiftly negated the next morning, when she came bounding out of her bedroom waving her Tooth Fairy dollar above her head and with a HUGE gap-toothed grin on her face!!

I guess the Tooth Fairy did okay after all!