Mom-tessori moments: real practical life

 The other day I realized my husband was waiting (while the baby napped even!) to start cleaning until I could get the kids out if the house.

Yeah no. There are plenty of things that are mostly impossible to do with kids underfoot but vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom are not on the list. Especially since we’ve really been trying to press home to H that we’re having him do all these tasks (like hanging up his jacket and bringing dishes to the kitchen) because we’re doing other things for the household (putting away the dry mittens and washing the dishes).

So we started cleaning the house and guess what happened? The kids ended up joining in. They quit running in circles (ok so honestly we told them to do this after E ran in to the vacuum but they clearly saw the logic 😅). They quit squabbling (mostly). And they honestly helped.

E vacuumed up the crumbs by their kitchen and H took care of the area around daddy’s desk. He also had to cone join me in the bathroom after fighting with his sister over the vacuum 🤪 but after a minute of sitting bored out of the way in the shower he began insisting that yes he did want to clean the toilet.

And he did. Almost independently. And he even did a decent job of it.

But the best part? Jealous E wanted her own turn and was insistent about helping with the downstairs bathroom, conveniently keeping the two of them separate and quieter.

Meanwhile the baby ended up taking an hour and a half nap so yeah, good thing he didn’t wait to start vacuuming!‘