Another portion

Remember that nice post I wrote exactly two weeks ago about praying for my daily portion of patience and grace?  Well, I had another opportunity to observe God's provision (and record events for Emily's entertainment/embarrassment at a future date).

I absolutely had to go to Waterloo this morning for bookkeeping business.  I also had stops at three stores on my agenda.  I knew the weather was going to get nasty after lunch, so waiting until afternoon was not an option.  However, the kids did not get the memo.  Both slept in late, but both woke up cranky.  Lincoln refused to wear a bib and had three dirty diapers before we left.  Emily decided she just plain didn't want to go.  At 9:00am I had to physically dress her from head to toe.  I just about lost it.  I had the van running and was prepared to carry her out and strap her into her seat kicking and screaming come hell or high water, but I somehow managed to regain my composure and decided to wait her out instead.  After a good 20 minute tantrum of tears and piercing screams she was able to get herself together and we finally walked out the door calmly at 10:15am.  Luckily, none of things on my shopping list absolutely had to be purchased today.  It was starting to rain as we headed home.

I had already decided on a "project" for Emily after lunch.  My sister, BIL and nephew stayed with us this past weekend.  After they left, Emily decided she wanted to "move in" to the guest room.  This occurred on Monday night after she was put to bed.  She apparently ended up sleeping in there on top of the covers.  She also hauled in three boxes of toys from the toy closet, all of her hair accessories and took all of her hanging clothes out of her closet and dumped them on a big pile on the guest room floor.  I did not discover all this until Tuesday evening at which point I decided just to shut the door and deal with it later.

So, at lunch I informed Emily that her job for the afternoon would be to clean up and put away everything in the guest room before she could come downstairs again.  I figured this banishment of sorts would be met with much protest, but she was actually fine with it.  However, it became quite a process.

After almost an hour I went upstairs to check on things.  Emily had indeed removed almost all the clothing from the guest room, but it was now in a giant heap on her own bedroom floor.  She had also found some jigsaw puzzles in the toy closet and had one of the 100-piece puzzles put together on her bedroom floor with the other pieces scattered around.  After a little encouragement and direction I went back downstairs.

My next trip upstairs was to investigate her claim that she was making bubbles.  She had discovered a bottle of bubble bath in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and apparently had been trying to make bubbles in the sink and tub.  She was also using bubble solution from a party favor she found.  We put a stop to that and I went back downstairs again.

At about 2:30pm Emily came downstairs to say she was done.  She helped me make a batch of Monster Bars and then we went up to check.  The floor and bed of the guest room were pretty much clear.  However, I checked under the bed and discovered Emily had tried to take a little short cut.  I hauled out everything from under the bed and told her she needed to finish putting it away for real.  She also needed to hang up all the clothes back in the closet.

The next progress check revealed that the guest room was finally back to normal and most of the clothes were hung up.  She needed help with a few items.  She had also taken my suggestion to pick up all the magazines in her room and put them back in the their box.  Her bed was neatly made.  However, the floor still looked like a war zone.

At 4:00pm Emily came down for a snack.  We then went back upstairs together to finish the job.  While she had sorted most of the toys into the appropriate labeled boxes, there were still puzzles on the floor and quite a bit of stuff just shoved under her bed.  We hauled it all out and got everything put away.  It is now safe to walk through her room again. :o)

The whole cleaning process was quite ironic, because in addition to the MOPS project I mentioned in a previous post, when she had to list the things she's thankful for on a leaf for her preschool Thanksgiving tree, the first thing she wrote was "a clean room."  Never mind the fact that her room had already been a disaster area for four days.  I'm just kind of curious how this whole thing will play out in the years to come.  Is she going to be a super messy teenager?  Are we going to have many more battles over picking up stuff?  Only God knows.  And only God knows what portion of patience and grace it's going to take. :o)