Pick up ALL the Legos!!

Since we now have all this extra time in our day with Courtney awake, I've had to restructure our daily schedule. She was watching way too much TV, getting bored and getting in trouble. TV is just so easy when I have things to do. But it's not so great when she gets bored. So I wrote out a daily schedule. It's been going pretty well, but I've realized that I need to work on Courtney's attention span. She can't sit down and play one thing for very long unless I'm right there encouraging it. So I've tried shortening the time slots and I will extend them as she does better.

Caylee is also joining in on the fun and she switches from playpen time, blanket time, her jumper, the swing, mommy time and family time. This morning Courtney was in room time and I hear her say " Uh oh Mommy! Poopy!" I sprinted up the stairs expecting a huge mess. But no mess. She grabbed my hand and led me to the toilet. She had pooped in the toilet during her room time! I was shocked! I'm trying to get her to clean up after each time we switch activities so I don't have to do it all, so after we cleaned up we were ready to take off for bible study.

Then this afternoon we had "Mommy and girls time" and after we were done it was time for me to get dinner ready so I set Courtney up for "independent play" and I gave her a box of legos at the kitchen table. Within seconds she was standing on the kitchen chair. I told her to sit down as I do everyday. In the time for me to put a glass in the cupboard she had managed to fall with two of our kitchen chairs and two stuff animals. I think it scared her more than anything but it frustrated me more. So I moved her to the coffee table where she proceeded to dump all the legos out. I told her to stop, she kept going, I told her to stop again and she dumped the entire bucket all over the living room. So I told her she had to pick up every piece before she could do anything else.

Between about 5 time outs, several tantrums, crying, pooping in the potty, and trying everything but cleaning up she had managed to put about 15 pieces of legos away. It was time for a bath, if she and Caylee didn't both need a bath I would have forgone it, but not this time. So I told her she would have to puck them up after the bath. I quickly bathed both girls and got them ready for bed in record time. We were back downstairs to puck up the legos. She asked if she could watch "TD" (TV) and I said after all the Legos are picked up. I have never seen her clean up so quickly and so well. She kept telling Caylee that she gets to watch TV when the Legos are picked up. Sure enough 2 hours later from the original dump, the Legos were picked up and Barney was in TV.

I don't know if she learned a lesson or not, but I hope she did.