The Little Things (Like Sqinkies!)

    The weekends usually mean Deep Cleaning for us, and the last few weeks we’ve been doing our best to get the kids more involved in their share of the task. They have reached the age where they can take on more, and we’re trying to raise responsible citizens, sure, but it’s more than that. We’ve reached a breaking point. There seems to be a direct correlation between a child’s age, their most desired toy, and the torture it inflicts on said child’s parents.

    After a good playing session, it takes one parent a good 45-90 minutes to clean up just the Legos. That’s if they haven’t been mixed with the Squinkies, rock collection, crayons, and anything else the size of a nickel, but we’ll come back to that. The Legos have to be cleaned up immediately. Have you ever stepped on a Lego with your bare foot? The CIA should look into Legos for interrogations! And Squinkies! A Squinkie is an adorable little rubber character that comes in its own plastic bubble (think upgraded quarter machine toy), and they are collectable. That means that if a child is between 4 and 9 years old, they have to have Squinkies. They immediately discard the plastic bubble, ready for a barefoot parent to step on. The child will play with the Squinky for a while, get distracted, lose the Squinky, then throw a hurricane of a fit until the plastic-bubble-crippled parent turns the whole house over to find the lost Squinky.

    But the one that sends me over the Coo Coo’s nest is the Turn Over.  The Turn Over is when they take everything- the Legos, Squinkies, Hot Wheels, rock collection, Barbie and her accessories, every tiny toy you can imagine, and dump them out onto the floor. All of them. From neatly sorted boxes to one big mess. The Turn Over takes about 5 seconds. It takes roughly 2-3 hours to clean up.

    So Cal and Lala and learning about good old work ethic. Something they don’t tell you when you become parent is that life lessons like this don’t often come because of any growth milestone. They come because the parents have had enough.