Saturday, October 10, 2009

Late-night ramblings

Our church's general conference was last Sunday, so this week I spent a couple of afternoons downtown helping with proofreading. We also had our final astronomy class this week and went on a long-promised trip to the Treehouse Children's Museum in Ogden. Today it hit me that I should probably catch up on laundry, since it had been somewhat neglected during all this busyness. But I was having a lazy afternoon, and I put it off until after dinnertime. When I finally went downstairs to start a load,

What to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a mountain of laundry, enough for a year.
And the children were saying they'd no clothes in sight,
So I knew right away I'd be up half the night.

And here I am at 11:57, waiting for another load to dry (and not the last one, either). And church is at 9 AM. Apparently I have not learned good household management skills yet. But at least we will have clean clothes to wear for Sunday and Monday!

I'm starting to realize that T. needs more things to do with his hands. He likes to be busy. Here are a couple of projects he came up with by himself and spent considerable time on.



He used all our pattern blocks and carefully built this tower of books. He wanted to leave it in the middle of the floor indefinitely, but I promised him I'd put a picture on my blog, so he agreed we could dismantle it.

Then he decided that even though it's weeks before Halloween, and even though we usually don't decorate for this holiday, he would make some signs to go in our window.



I especially like the bat. Here's a close-up:



I think it's kind of cute. I almost told him that, before I realized he probably didn't design it to be cute and wouldn't appreciate the comment.

And we can't leave out the rest of the family. Here's Mike doing what he does a lot -- making phone calls for church business.



And here are M. and A. giggling together over something or other.



This is one of those good sister moments. We have a lot of the other kind too. I don't take pictures of those, though.

I think the dryer is done. I'm off to figure out a math equation. (If it's Saturday night, and 5 people need enough clothes to wear and towels to use until you next do laundry sometime on Monday, what is the minimum number of washer loads still required tonight?)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is time to delegate laundry to those kids! That way you will have more time to blog!!!

Lisa said...

In that picture, A is a little clone of you!

I agree with Reg, it's time for the kids to start learning some laundry skills. A friend of a friend with eight kids put a laundry basket in each kid room (there are 2 kids per room) and the kids each have an assigned laundry day. She said it took a while, and some of the kids are better at it than others, but they have finally started figuring that they if they miss their day, they'll have no clean clothes. It's excellent preparation for college and missions. :)

Andrea M said...

I agree with your friends regarding laundry. Even though I am home all day...I feel that my children must learn to live without me, and by that....I mean that they must learn to do for themselves all of the things that they need to become strong, independent adults. I cannot tell you the amount of Missionaries out in the field who have no CLUE about how to do laundry, clean a toilet, plan menus and shopping ( eating top ramen every day is not the answer) and how to manage time. The most effective way for Sarah, Sasha, and Jayson to learn was when I went on "Strike" I did start the strike with everything done and in its place. I let them know that from that moment forward, they would be responsible for their own laundry. It is not hard to sort by color, then press a button on a machine. For Pete's sake...the pioneers had to boil water and beat the laundry with a stick. They also fix their own breakfast before schooling and make their own lunch. I am perfectly capable of doing all of this for them, but I feel that they need a strong dose of reality so that they will not be freaked out when they leave the home for Mission, Marriage, or just going up. If you want to talk to me about it in more detail....call me at 253.537.4233 At this point in life, the only laundry you should be doing is Mike and Yours....

Tamary said...

I agree with all of you. In my defense, the kids do know how to do a lot of other chores -- cooking, cleaning toilets, shopping, etc. -- and all of them have helped with laundry before, but I just haven't gotten organized enough to turn it over to them yet. You know how it's easier to do things yourself than to stay on top of others doing them? Yeah. But I know it's not the best in the long run. We will have to set up a new system.