Monday, October 22, 2012

Clean

Today, as I was powering through my impromptu cleaning list, all I could think about is the story by Laura Joffe Numeroff, If you Give a Mouse a Cookie. My kids love this book and the others like it... Maybe I've ready these books a few too many times, because as I was going about my business, I was narrating my own little story... a mom's variation of the story... It goes a little something like this:

If you give a mom a clean shower, she'll ask you to clean the rest of the bathroom. But since there is nobody at the house willing to listen to such an audacious request, she'll decide to do it herself.

With a clean shower, mom will notice that the rugs should be washed too. When the rugs are washed, mom decides that the floor surely could use a scrub as well. But the floor can't be scrubbed with dirty laundry piled on it, so she starts washing clothes. While she's washing clothes, mom will decide to sort out the summer things and start a box for Good Will.

Scrubbing the floor will remind mom that it's been a while since the sink and vanity have been wiped-down, so she'll clean those too. The toilet goes without saying; so that gets a little extra attention too. All of the toilet cleaning will remind mom that there are two other toilets in the house... so she cleans those as well.

At the end of all that cleaning, mom wants nothing more than to take a shower, but since it's freshly scrubbed, she opts for a cookie instead.

(If you've never read the Mouse Cookie book, the preceding will seem odd... but I promise the children's book is very cute and tops on the littlest people's list.)

I'm ready to put my feet up... and the next time Ellie asks me to read the Mouse Cookie book, I may ask her if she wants to hear my version, If you Give a Mom a Clean Shower... she'll probably say, no... because she knows that if Mom starts talking about a clean shower, chances are she'll want to clean the rest of the bathroom.

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