…and two boxes of miscellaneous toys

Remember the lego that we took away?  The boxes that we took away because the boy wouldn’t tidy up?  Well he hasn’t tidied up and he hasn’t asked me for it back.  The husband says he’s been asked, but either he’s too lazy to get it out of the cupboard or he has more willpower than I thought.

On Monday I received a text from our landlord: could he come and take a look at the house on Tuesday evening.  Oh hell no!  As you can tell, we’re not the tidiest of families.  There was no way we could get the house in a presentable state for a landlord visit by the next day.  In fact, we’ve got a visitor arriving on the weekend, and we’re pushing it to get the place nice enough for then.  A compromise; seeing as we’re both working on Friday evening perhaps Thursday would be ok.  Surely we could tidy up enough by then.

Monday night was a bit of a no show.  I slumped when I got in and didn’t really get moving until the husband and boy returned just before 9.  Tuesday we got a fair bit done but were hampered by the boy’s lack of interest (and movement) and the fact that when I stand for long (and often relatively short) periods, I start getting back pain.  Oh the joy of this pregnancy!

Last night I stopped in at the supermarket on the way home and grabbed a large box.  I picked the boys up and we made a stop to buy some paint for the hub.  The husband went back to start some of the painting and I took the boy home.  I warned the boy that any toys that were left out once he went to bed would be put in the box and thrown in the bin.  I tried to convince him to start tidying but he wanted dinner instead.

He decided on scrambled egg and I left him with a bowl whilst I went to sort the clean laundry that was threatening to overtake the conservatory.  The next thing I know he’s telling me he wants to eat like a dog because it’s quicker.  There’s scrambled egg all over the floor and his face is buried in a pile of the stuff on the table.  Needless to say, I was not amused.  (Well, I was.  It was highly amusing, not that I’d let him know I thought that.)

Once the egg was cleared up and I was stuck in the laundry again, the boy came out to the conservatory where he’d been instructed to tidy up the toys he’d strewn across the floor the night before.  He picked a few things up and dumped them in the wrong box (at least it was a box and not the floor) but found it much more amusing to pick his pants up from one of the piles and start throwing them around the room.

As I was carting the folded laundry upstairs the boy followed me.  “Do you even care?” he asked.  “No.”  I replied.  “I really don’t.”  We returned downstairs and once again I asked him to start tidying his toys.  His response was to kick over the box of toys he’d already managed to tidy.  It would’ve made more sense to me to kick over an empty box but hey.

He was calmly shepherded up to bed and whilst he was getting changed he asked “does this mean no more XBox for the rest of the week?”  He knows his punishments so well.  “That means no more Xbox for the rest of this week.”  He cried, but he knows the rules.  I’m just glad we’re relatively busy over the weekend and that I’m not the one at home now it’s the holidays. 

And that night, as we finished tidying, we put the toys that hadn’t been cleared away in that box.  Two boxes actually.    Sure, the husband’s got some finishing off to do before the landlord arrives this evening, but everything at least looks under control now.

This morning, while the husband was still in bed (the downside of me not covering summer holidays) the boy came downstairs.  He looked around and said “but I was going to do my tidying this morning.”  There were a few small toys that we’d missed, and I told him that if he tidied them all up, we could see about getting some of his toys out of the bin.  He sat down and starting picking things up but immediately lost interest in clearing up and started playing with them.  I guess those toys won’t be coming out of the cupboard after all. 

Then when I was leaving for work I nearly fell over those two boxes of toys sitting in the hallway.  It seems the person who does all the heavy lifting in our house may have forgotten his duties as bin man.  He better hope the boy doesn’t find them.