Cleaning Classes (and Cake)

I rain out of time to post yesterday, but we had a lovely day & there was something that I wanted to write down...

This week's been a bit tricky so far because I've been feeling pretty unwell with some kind of summer virus thing, and I knew we had a friend coming to stay (she arrived yesterday) so I wanted to get the house ready for her.  Unfortunately the illness left me feeling to drained to do anything so I spent two days just trying to supervise the boys from the sofa as much as possible (LOTS of Wii-playing and TV-watching - oh well, at least they enjoyed it, and it was only a couple of days).  Yesterday I finally started to feel halfway back to normal but quickly realised I still wasn't up to cleaning the whole house in a single morning, so had to make do with doing the bits the boys couldn't safely do, and then sitting on chairs/ beds and directing the boys.

You know what?  It was actually a bit of a revelation.  A friend and I had already been chatting about how we both felt the need this "term" to be training our boys (she has two boys too) in practical things like cleaning, tidying, general housework.  As I blogged the other day, I just can't carry it all by myself - but it's not just using the boys as free labour; I really want to train them in positive life-skills.  While I was sat on the bed talking Eldest through making his bed I realised that I have been doing everyone a huge disservice by assuming the role of she-who-does-everything.   It is actually ironically lazy of me to wear myself out doing all the work - just because it's EASIER than training the boys.  It's much harder to train others to do what I can do without really thinking about it - it takes an investment of time and patience to impart practical hands-on skills - but it is so worth it!  Somewhere down the line it will save time and stress when the boys are in the habit of tidying up after themselves.  Right now I have to accept it will take an input of more work to teach them - but that's OK, there's purpose to it :)

Anyway, so yesterday morning we between us got the house not perfect as I would have liked, but clean enough to welcome a guest.  In the rest of our time we chatted about the Netherlands (my friend is Dutch) and made an awesome (if I do say so myself) welcome cake in the shape of an owl - recipe here...

So that was my thoughts from yesterday - and hey, I managed to keep it brief! *pats self on back*  We're off out for a walk now, so until the next time...