Moving to Seattle: A little clean up today

I tried cleaning the house a bit today, but that's close to impossible because no matter how hard I try, the kids can scatter the toys around the room much faster than I can put them away. It's often hopeless.

Since Genna was in school, I did manage to clean up and recycle some of her drawings. Shortly after we moved here I purchased a ream of 650 sheets of paper. And even though I insist that Genna uses both sides of the paper, we are nearly through 2/3's of the ream. Genna can sit and draw for hours and hours. She also loves to write her letters and numbers. This is all great, except that if she sees one of her drawings in the recycle bin, she starts to cry. She doesn't want us to throw away any of her artwork or "books." That means we have 400 pieces of paper that we cannot throw away, not including the 100+ drawings she's done at school. Our refrigerator is covered in art and we've long since run out of magnets. So, while she is at school, it is my time to sneak some of her drawings into the recycle bin. I just have to let Noah know that Genna can't help take out the recycling. One time she was helping and started to cry when she saw some of her works in the recycling dumpster; that stack of drawings came back in the house. Boy did I feel like a bad parent that evening.

Genna reading one of her books to me. She's actually starting to sound out some of the words now instead of just memorizing.

"Look at the pictures, mommy"

Jonah and his "learn your colors" book

Jonah trying to draw like her sister. Genna appropriately calls his drawings "fireworks." Jonah often draws a few "fireworks" scribbles, then runs over to me with his paper to show me, "Fire-orkf, mama!"
Note the mature grip on the crayon; Genna has taught him well.