the boss has spoken

I've been so busy today, cleaning the house to Dennis' exact specifications. It seems that I have been working on it forever now, but I feel that the end is near! We are such a family of stackers, and stacks of every conceivable thing were all over the house. I am the one that sorts the stacked items and puts them away, and it just takes forever!

Dennis spent a large part of his afternoon with Gigi and Gran at the lake, checking out the construction on Gigi's place (he took a hard hat with him). He apparently sanded some furniture while he was there--he was delighted to tell me about it when he got home, proudly showing me the dust on his jacket.

Tonight I was sorting all of our arts and crafts supplies and learning tools in our library when Dennis started in again on me. "Will you please play with me, Mommy?" he asked, and I explained that I was cleaning the library so that our weekend guests will have a place to sleep. I showed him how I'd organized our ongoing projects and supplies (pottery wheel, solar system, paints, clay, etc) and how his work table was now clean. He pointed to the main table in the room and said "well, you need to clean THAT table, too." I should have let him clean his work table himself, I suppose, but I wanted to reorganize everything (which is what I've been doing to the entire house). He left me alone then, and when I went to check on him in his room, it was quiet and clean--he'd turned off his music and was looking at his books, all his toys put away in their places.

I wonder when he'll get to the age where I can have bathroom privacy without him either banging on the door and yelling or (worse) NOT hovering at the door because he's up to something. Today I heard lots of scrapes and bumps and exertion noises, and when I got to his room, he'd brought his wagon in and had loaded it up with firefighting equipment (and was dressed in full firefighter gear). He was trying to screw the bolt back into the handle (apparently he had some difficulty maneuvering it through his doorway--it's a big wooden wagon, after all). It's a Daddy job because the place that holds the bolt got pretty bent in the process (and I don't know where he hides the tools). It appears entirely fixable, thank goodness! I believe the wagon was his gift from us for his first birthday, and he's had some good times in it (beach, winery, campground, pumpkin patch, parades, lake house rides...).