Stifling her Creativity

Since I'm trying despirately to deep clean my entire house all at once I've had to also address the challenge of my daughter and her naturally creative and inquisitive spirit. I was feeling really bad yesterday because she spent a whole lot of the day on the sofa watching PBS kids. I usually try really hard to come up with stimulating activites, but there's only so much I can do at once.

When I woke up today with a hurt knee from walking upstairs to get the laundry and taking it to the basement to wash it and then hauling it back up I knew things needed to change. I figured that both of us would be happier today if I slowed down my pace with cleaning and tried to incorporate a little more interesting activites for her. So after I put the first load of laundry in we read books, then she took a bath, then things went downhill.

I decided that she could color pages that I could then use to make thank you notes to mail to her friends and family for her wonderful birthday presents. I had to leave in the middle of one to switch over the laundry. Not so bad right? I mean she was in the middle of coloring and covering a sheet of paper with stickers. She couldn't do anything too bad right? Wrong. I came back and she had retrieved her paints and spilled them all over the kitchen table and was attempting to clean them up when I returned. We were done making thank you cards.

Later, after having actually done her hair, I needed to switch over the loads again. I went upstairs to get the dirties and came down to see our recliner and the floor beneath it covered in water from the spray bottle I use on her hair. At least it's water right? Oh, that's what I thought too, until I realized the reason she sprayed the chair was because earlier she had gotten some of the paints (from the previous spill) on the chair. She was attempting to clean that mess up all by herself.

As I was trying to slice cheese and get out some crackers to eat with applesauce for a snack I appreciated the quiet that reigned in our house for a good two minutes. Then I came into the dining room to put the snack on the table. I found my daughter eagerly sitting at the table waiting for her snack. My heart was so happy with the angelic child sitting before me. Then I smelled the overwhelming smell of vicks vapo rub. She had taken the small can of baby vicks and smeared it all across her face, hands, and clothing. She says, "Smells good?" Yes darling, it smells like heaven.

So maybe sitting her in front of the TV makes me feel guilty, but at least I have only one mess at a time to deal with. I mean there's only so much stimulation that mommy can handle in one day!