Thursday, February 7, 2008

Am I Doing This Right?


The first word out of Dan's mouth when he comes home each evening is "Woah." That would be a good thing if he was saying it because I looked foxy and had dinner ready on a beautifully set table. But that's not usually (okay, ever) the case, so it's not a good thing. Dan exclaims "Woah!" because generally by the time he comes home, the entire house is in disarray, Maggie is sitting in the middle of all the contents of the kitchen cabinets which are now on the floor, and I'm trying to get dinner on the table before it burns.


Maggie is a little ball of energy. She never bothered the Christmas tree...but that's the only thing she has left alone in her entire life. Every day consists of her pulling videos (yes, my friends we still use VHS) off the shelf while I say "No! No! No!" Then she helps me put them back. Then she pulls our church books off the shelf while I yell "No Maggie! Don't!" Then she helps me put them back. Then she opens all of the drawers in the kitchen (she can reach ALL of them now) and I tell her "No!" again.
Five minutes later the entire process repeats again. At which point I am exhausted by the clean up process and sometimes skip it. Then I think, "Hmm, maybe a change of scenery." I take the child downstairs to her playhouse and various other large and in my opinion very appealing play things and she bypasses all of it and heads for the pens on Dan's desk and his bookshelves full of text books.
Honestly.


Now, I love her. I really do. But I need someone to tell me the cold hard truth:


a) is she insane?


or


b) am I doing something wrong? what have I done? did I create this [very adorable] beast?


Lay it on me folks. I'll be brave and I think I can take it.

10 comments:

Kirsten said...

The truth is you are doing everything right! You are letting her explore, redesign your home and I hate to tell you this but it doesn't get better until she is about three!!!! Just don't let her find your makeup (like Hailey) or the rest is history. Your post is precisely why I don't clean the house anymore. A)It just gets messy again five minutes later B)I don't sweep because Karli is my new vacumn cleaner!! Good luck and maybe we should try destroying a room sometime. Maybe it would be fun. Just think...throwing all the covers off the bed, dumping everything, acting like a tornado for five minutes, etc. It could be interesting! Anyway, she is not insane...just a toddler and soon she'll have a sidekick! It gets even better after that!!! ;) k, I am tired and I won't ramble anymore!

Evenson Fam said...

Wow. This all sounds very familiar. I guess it is normal since we do that same routine every day.

Emily Rasmussen said...

sounds just like my Bridger! Its good to know I am not the only one! :o)

Vhari said...

Genevieve does the same kind of thing. I just barely went through a mad reorganizing in the hopes that I could better childproof. Well it's helped somewhat but now she has decided she is the world's greatest acrobat and is trying to climb on everything. Soon we will have nothing in our house but toys, so that I don't have to go mad picking up and worrying. Sometimes I think we should just live within padded walls for both of our sakes.

Kristalyn said...

Your post sounds exactly like my life...down to the video-pulling, book-throwing, drawer-emptying fun! I clean up two times...when Mason takes a nap and in the evening when he goes to sleep. If I know someone is coming over, then I try to straighten up then, too. The drop-by visitors get to see the house how it normally is, in all of its post-tornado glory.

Holdinator said...

My question is, how is she in church? My boys both do all that stuff (Joshua only does it now if Morgan is getting attention, albeit negative, for doing it), but it seems like in church all the other kids sit quietly and color or just snuggle with their parents. Not my kids! They are all over the place. Morgan's favorite thing is to try to make it up on the stand in sacrament meeting. He's quick too.

Megan said...

Well I'm feeling much better knowing that I'm not alone and that my child isn't altogether insane. Thank you all. And Brian, Maggie is HORRIFIC at church. She wants to sit with anybody but us and play with anything but what we brought and eat anything that belongs to anybody else. Its kind of embarrassing. I just hand out bags of fruit snacks to all the other families as peace offerings because Maggie helps herself to all their goldfish, raisens, and teddy grahams.

Jessica said...

http://goodmommybadmommy.blogspot.com/2007/10/childrens-song.html

I think this sums things up for me after following my little hurricane around all day...

Ginna said...

Hey, I'm a little late to this, but I've been there. Believe me. THere's nothing wrong. It's just babies that age. And they go through phases. Sometimes they'll leave stuff alone, and then other times they HAVE to destroy. It's like some sort of strange carnal urge.
So not to worry. But it sure is exhausting, isn't it?
We ended up with everything we owned up about 4 feet from the floor at our last house. It looked really weird.

Jenny Groberg said...

One word, cupboard locks! And this passes... Adlen is just over 2 and doesn't really do it anymore. I remember thinking when I was pregnant, "WHAT AM I DOING"!!!?!? But by the time your little one gets here she'll be a big girl as weird as that seems.

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