Mr Men and Little Miss 1

The twins' favourite characters now are Mr Men characters. In particular, Mr Messy because Mr Messy gets to tramp in mud and traipse it all over his house. He also gets to play with charcoal and smear it all over the walls. Because they know this is behaviour we don't condone, they live vicariously through Mr Messy.

I shall try to complete a 7 part series (barring the delivery of the Muffin) of how they epitomise Little Miss and Mr Men characters.

Today, I got some of Muffin's stuff washed. A whole array of face cloths, different thickness for different purposes. The thinnest ones as wash cloths, the slightly thicker ones as bibs. There is a bib hanging there but that is Evan's from when he used to have drool on tap.

Anyway, they were attracted to it hanging out becuase of the multitude of colours. And it then occurred to me that I should get them to help. The initial plan was to just get them to help me put them away and perhaps teach them how to fold the face cloths into simple squares.

In this situation, Evan was Mr Helpful. He went to get the laundry basket and he pulled off everything on the rack regardless of whether it was dry enough to go into the basket. Generally, the boy is helpful. He'll stand and watch me get ready in the morning and hand me different jars of lotion thinking I might need it. He will quite accurately fetch things I ask him to and is most pleased if I give him rubbish that he needs to toss into the bin.




















When everything had been quite joyfully tossed into the laundry basket, I had to sit down and sort through the ones that were fully dry and the ones that needed to be aired a little bit more. Because Jordan saw me put some back on the rack, she started taking everything back out of the basket and putting them on the rack. Rather than stop her, I let her put everything back and I sat there and watched Jordan and her Mr Helpful brother attack the task with single-minded determination.

Just as Evan is Mr Helpful, Baby J is Little Miss Meticulous. Evan was quite happy putting back the wash cloths onto the rack but he did it quite haphazardly and they'd fall to the ground or he'd just drap it over another piece of cloth. It didn't matter if his laundry fell into either category and hung precariously on the rack, as long as he did it, he considered it a job done.

Jordan however, not only made sure that what she was hanging up stayed up, she also made sure that all the pieces of cloth were evenly spaced out and hung from the middle. To make sure, she would fold down the middle and smooth out the sides. And she would repeat this with every new piece that she hung up. When she was done, she literally took a step back and went "WOW! Look at that", genuiely surprised that what she did looked so good.

Their Grandma suggested I teach them how to use clothes pegs to hold the clothes and cloths in place. But I immediately I thought of all the dangers, including pinching themselves by accident, pinching each other on purpose, clothes pegs going rogue on them and the springs giving way causing plastic and bits of metal to boomerang round the room. Then I told their Grandma in terms she understood, one skill a day is quite enough.

Technorati Tags: twins, Mr Men and Little Miss