As I was typing up that last story, Maggie was happily playing with a big box of play food. Then, she asked to play with her puzzles. Usually, I try to get her to pick up something like play food scattered across our entire living room before moving on to, say her puzzles, but I was already feeling bad that I was taking the time to type up that previous post, rather than playing with her, so I was all ready just to let it go. I put her puzzles within her reach, then sat back down to finish typing.
Suddenly, I hear a little voice singing "clean-up, clean-up..." I look over and Maggie is putting the play food back in its box. Of course, I jumped from my seat to sing and clean with her (want to do everything possible to encourage that behavior). She kept cleaning until all of her play food was back in its box. I was so proud. I was smiling and cheering and starting to regain some of my broken self-esteem (see below for that explanation.) Maggie had remembered to clean up one toy first, before moving on the the next. This was a major break-through!
Then, I sat back down to try to quickly finish up typing. In about two minutes, Maggie dumped all the pieces out of her two puzzles (with no attempt to put them back) and quickly moved to the book shelf that houses most of her toys. She proceeded to dump every basket on the floor, swiped all the books from the shelf, and continued in her rampage until almost every toy was out of its rightful place. There is one lone basket and a couple of stragglers remaining on the shelves. Our living room looks like a battlefield.
One step at a time, right? At least she picked up the food.
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