Let it snow...

[crschmidt]

Or not. Just dealt to the best of my ability with snow in the front of the house - shoveled the walkway, alongside the cars (the ground is gravel, so there's still some snow there), and along the sidewalk. Also dug out the curb so that we can back out of the driveway without getting stuck. Hopefully a snowplow doesn't come along and destroy all my hard work.

Not all of it is clean to the ground, but the sun being out today seems to be turning a lot of it into water, so I'll probably wait until afternoon and sweep up the rest, which will have turned into water at that point, so we don't get ice. The biggest problem is that the people we share a driveway with went in and out 3 or 4 times yesterday, so they packed some of it down to ice, but i think that since I scraped the snow off the top of it, that'll probably turn to water today sometime.

Dishwasher is emptied, thanks to Alicia, so I need to fill that in a bit. I think that I need to start working on assigning her more specific tasks for cleaning up. I can tell her to empty the dishwasher or do a load of laundry and she does it well, but if I tell her to clean her room she typically goes and reads instead of doing even the simplest amount of cleaning. I can tell her to move a stack of laundry from her floor the the laundry room and it gets done, but if that same stack of laundry is there and I just tell her to clean, she won't.

Took some time with Julie today to have her clean up some of the hair ties that had gotten all over the living room. Having a laser pointer handy helped, but it is frustrating that she gets distracted in the five seconds it takes to pick something up and put it away. It makes me worry about her having ADD as severe as or more severe than her sister's, but there isn't much to be done about it at this point. It's hard to evaluate how distractable she may or may not be when she doesn't have the full range of speech yet. She's doing some additional therapy stuff - speech and physical - at school, so we'll see what they think.

I'm tired. And I hurt. I need to go finish cleaning the house though.

Comments

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much where we're at too. It's not *bad* neccesarily, but it makes cleaning really hard, because I know I could do it so much faster myself if I'm going to have to sit there and hold hands the whole time. But I don't want to teach that the kids can just have us do everything for them: Alicia already has that in mind way too much, like yelling at me for not hanging up her coat when she left it on the floor.

Parenting is just too hard :p

[pthalo]

it really is *sympathy* kids are cute but Jolie makes me tear my hair out sometimes.

Bring a book or something to keep yourself occupied while you sit in the room with them. They're learning important skills by putting things away, but you shouldn't have to inconvenience yourself too much. Would a list work with Alicia? Or could you make a treasure hunt type thing out of it? "I want you to find everything on your floor that's made of cloth and put it away, either into the hamper if it's clothing or..." "Pick up all wooden toys and put them in the toy box."

[moonlitdream.livejournal.com]

If they have a hard time knowing what to do, you could also just help them by showing them how to do it. I'm not saying do it for them, but model it for them. Instead of going from doing it for them straight to having them do it all on their own, clean it with them. "Okay, now we're going to pick up all the clothes and put them in the laundry." And then all of you go around the room picking them up. Do this for a little while and then they will be into the routine and can do it by themselves.

For Julie (perhaps Alicia too), you can get a good round of I Spy going, "I spy a window that needs to be washed. I spy a coat that needs to be hung in the closet. I spy a book that needs to be put on the bookshelf."

Play fun kids music while they clean.

Tell them how proud you are of them when they are finished cleaning something. Tell them when they've done a good job making the bed or putting the books away. Maybe they can put a sticker on the calendar for that day if their room is clean. :)