And Now a Few Words About LG

People keep asking how LG likes being a big sister.  The short answer: she loves it.  She reads to her brother, she holds him daily (after being hand-sanitized, of course!), and she "watches" him while I do things like put dinner on the table.

But we have what would seem to be an odd form of sibling readjustment (not rivalry, really) going on here.  As I mentioned briefly in a recent post, LG cleaned the bathroom sink and tub the other day, because I was about to do it and I guess it seemed like fun to her (just like scrubbing pots seemed fun about a month ago).  She also washed fingerprints off the walls when she saw me attacking them with a baby wipe (I'm going through some post-baby nesting or something, I guess).  Now these are helpful things, even if I need to clean up after her cleaning.  I don't want to discourage her from doing something she views as helpful.  And, to be fair, there are legitimately helpful things she does, like putting the dinner dishes in the dishwasher on occasion because, as she noted, "you're occupied" (nursing the baby, of course).  We have a reward system going through which she puts marbles in a jar and cashes them in for either rewards or actual money when the jar is full; it's something she picked up at school that works well for her.  So...all these chores she does earn marbles.  And she usually earns bonus marbles for doing unsolicited chores.

You know there's a but coming, right?  Now what would be really helpful is if she just put her freaking toys away.  And backpack.  And coat/shoes/mittens/hat.  And schoolwork.  And if she put her gum wrappers/lollipop wrappers/random scraps of paper in the trash, rather than the coffee table.  And if she put her cereal back in the cabinet and brought the stapler back to my office after she took it out.  I fold laundry and it ends up in a ball on her bedroom floor.  The result is that I am constantly reminding her to put things away.  Or doing it myself, because if I'm going to be home all day with the Boy, I need some semblance of order.  What she told me, when I confronted her about this:  Mommy, I like cleaning.  I do not like putting things away.   

Now if I were being logical about this, I'd just encourage her weird desires, get her a package of rubber gloves for Hanukkah, and re-delegate the chores in our house.  But I just want her to be a kid, who does kid things, and then puts them away.  And leaves the bathroom sink to me.