Wednesday, December 12, 2007

When do they stop making messes?

Arrgh!!

My daughter Elisabeth has apparently reached an important developmental milestone: she's now climbing on the counters and taking everything out of the cabinets (especially in the bathroom) and leaving it in a jumbled heap in the counter or in the sink. That used to be Catherine's job, but she's moved beyond that stage.

Catherine is now interested in cooking. She just made "hot cocoa" out of water, milk, cherry jam, and salt. She pronounced it "yucky". So then she was on her way to mix up a new and improved batch. . . .

I'm afraid the answer to the titular question is "never". Please say it's not so.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I'll let you know. My oldest turns 18 next month and I came home to a living room and kitchen filled with remants of their snow day off from school. So far I haven't seen much improvement....

TriDaddy said...

Just thought I'd drop by and wish you guys a Merry Christmas!

Children need to make x-amount of mess on a daily basis. In our house, whenever one starts getting neat, the other picks up the slack for making messes!

LBTEPA said...

I hate to break it to you but my husband is 45 and he makes the same amount of mess my daughter does only with bigger stuff :(
We seemed to solve the cooking thing by making it part of the weekely routine - Wed night is cooking night, usually with Daddy, cause Mummy doesn't really like cooking. We get some weird stuff for dinner sometimes but they have fun

21stCenturyMom said...

They stop making them as often and as big when they start getting in trouble for it. Seriously - if they are big enough to climb on the counter and pull all the stuff out of the cupboard they are big enough to learn that it is not okay.

And they will still make messes but the mess they make will just be a by product of what they do - not the thing they do for fun.