Where The Mind Takes You

During the week, Eli does room-time for anywhere from 30-minutes to 2-hours, depending on the breakdown of our day and if he naps or not. This is usually a great thing in our house, though we have had a few phases where Eli has resisted staying in his room the whole time. Usually, though, he loves that time. He gets really creative with his stuffed animals, setting them up to watch a movie, or he arranges legos so that they are a baseball field in his room and he uses a marble to play the game. Or sometimes I hear him in there singing along with his guitar or air drums.

Lately he's been 'cleaning' at least once a week in there. This started because we had some issues with him pulling out too many toys during the holidays. When the time came for him to come out of his room, it would be a mess, and we'd have to get after him to clean up the toys. So then we went to him only playing with a few things I pulled out for him for a while, but now we're back to him having a pretty wide variety of things to occupy himself with, and he always cleans up when he's done. And he's ALWAYS very proud. "See how well I cleaned up, Mommy?"

In the 'cleaning' phase he's in, Eli has turned into a decorator. Some days we'll go in and all of the pictures and knick-knacks from his dresser will be arranged on his bookshelf, and vice versa. Or we'll go in and all of his shoes will be lining the perimeter of his room. Eli always has a great explanation or story for it too. This week I went in to find a clean room and all of his stuffed animals were in one corner, standing up. He told me that they liked to hang out together there, so they could eat and sleep next to each other. That kid is awesome, in case you were wondering.