Hurricane Darnell!!!

Every morning when we wake-up, we walk into the family room and all the toys are neatly tucked away in their respective places. Since we have opened up the fireplace and built-in to the boys, we have managed to keep their toys organized.....
Each morning, the floor is clear! We can walk without tripping on toys and it is very nice to have 'reclaimed the family room.' I like to enjoy a few sips of coffee before we unleash the boys. Here is what the floor looks like in the morning....

The boys wake up each morning between 7:30 and 8:00am and within minutes the calm serenity of organization is BLOWN AWAY by 'Hurricane Darnell.' Here is a pic of the same space after I put the boys down for their morning nap (aka - the eye of the storm)....

It is amazing to just sit back and watch them attack their toys. Their chaos is somewhat choreographed... Andrew heads straight to the blocks and dumps them over his head, Jared proceeds directly to the toy box to pull it out and dump it's contents onto the floor and Wesley proceeds to stand on whatever object is available to pull each item off the second shelf.

Each evening we put the toys back away so the family room can feel like an adult space again. We use to do this after the boys go to sleep. Now, we have started (or trying) to put the toys away while the boys are awake so they can see the amount of effort that goes into picking up the toys each night. Doing this in their presence is quite the aerobic activity because the are working against the grain by taking out the toys we are putting away!

I hope that one day they will respect this effort and resist the desire to just scatter the toys for the sake of scattering them (ha, ha)!! I also look forward to the day when the boys put the toys away themselves... dare to dream!

Take care,