It's Clean Up Time!

Yesterday Chase and I were just hanging out together at home.  After lunch, it was time for him to clean up all of his Legos that were covering the entire living room carpet and get ready for a nap.   When I reminded him that it was time to do so, he got very upset and said that he didn't want to clean up.  So I told him he could go straight to bed without watching a few minutes of one of his many VCD/DVD's.  Normally he would go ahead and clean up his toys so he could watch a show.  This time, he chose to go straight to bed.  He struts off down the hallway and I'm walking behind him, smiling to myself.  He climbs into bed, lays down and says "Mommy, you clean up?"  I really wanted to laugh but knew that I couldn't.  I told him no, the mess will still be there for you to clean up when you wake up.  He didn't like that answer :-)

It was REALLY hard for me not to clean up that mess because it's right in the middle of the living room, but I kept my word and left it there.  After his nap he called for me so I went back to his room.  The first thing he said to me was "Mommy, you cleaned up?"  I said "No, you still have to clean up."  He got mad and rolled over so I left him there and went back to the living room, laughing the whole way.  He stayed back there another 10-15 minutes and then finally decided to come out.  It took him another 10 minutes before he figured out that mommy was not going to clean up his mess and if he wanted to play he was going to have to clean up that mess first.  So, reluctantly he cleaned up all his Legos.  Later that night when he made another mess on the floor, he was a little quicker in cleaning up :-)