Really?

The girls made a HUGE mess in the basement Wednesday night.  

The colorful mess you see there is made up of lots and lots of little foam stickers as well as LOTS of little tiny beads that you can't see.  And I think that's even after a little bit of cleaning had already occurred!  At least the little tubes of glitter glue were all off the floor... Apparently during their nightly clean-up, Merrill thought it would be a good idea to throw "confetti" on the floor.  Yeah, not such a good idea.  They didn't manage to clean it up before bed Wednesday night, so we left it there for them for Thursday morning.  It wasn't cleaned up until Thursday night before bed.  Seriously.  They spent the ENTIRE day in the basement with the exception of their swim lessons and meals.  No other activities were allowed until the mess was cleaned up, which means they missed their morning show.  Because of the nature of the mess, I couldn't be down in the basement to supervise or help when Teddy was awake.  When Teddy was asleep, I would go down and offer to help as long as they were cleaning too -- I wasn't about to clean it all up for them.  Inevitably they would piddle around and just kind of spread the mess around more and I would go back upstairs letting them know I'd be back down in a bit and if I saw progress I would help them.  I never saw progress.  In fact, most of the time they somehow managed to make the mess bigger. (they kept respilling things!)  By the afternoon they were pretty tired of being down there.  They tried all kinds of things to get to come up -- asking for food, saying they had to use the bathroom (I did let them up for that...), wanting to read, ANYTHING.  They spent a good amount of time on the stairs (while I was sitting in front of the door making sure they stayed downstairs) trying to convince me that they were actually downstairs cleaning and I could open the door (as if I didn't know they were standing right behind it).  Other things heard from the other side of the door: Millie proclaiming that she was a strong girl and could push the door open.  She tried her best and urged Merrill to help.  Merrill generally tired first and claimed it was too hard; Merrill coming up with the plan to go out the back door and come back in the house through the front (very clever plan ...) and Millie telling her no because that was naughty (whew!); Millie moaning: "oh Merrill WHY did you have to throw all of that!"; lots and lots of excuses.  FINALLY after dinner they went back down and when I went to check on them they were at least attempting to clean.  Since Scott was home from work and could hang out with Teddy upstairs, I stayed down and cleaned one corner of the room -- making piles of the different materials and putting them in their respective containers.  I made a lot more progress on my little corner than they did, so I told them I was going to go back upstairs and I'd be back soon and I'd like to see more clear spots like the one I made.  I didn't have a lot of hope.  But they surprised me.  Millie came up to tell me they weren't done, but they were almost done and a few minutes later Merrill came up saying Millie told her she would do the rest by herself because there wasn't that much.  I was doubtful and went down to check and wouldn't you know it, there wasn't much left.  I helped Millie with the rest and called it a night.  Afterwards I told Millie I knew it had been a tough day, but I was proud of the decision she made at the end.  She said she realized that if she just cleaned it up, it would be done and she wouldn't miss any of the other fun activities planned for the up-coming days (they had missed a trip to my parent's house that afternoon).  Talk about a face-palm moment.  I'd been telling them that since the night before ;).  At least they were listening.  When I relayed this story to my parents (explaining why we did not come over to their house) they found it quite funny.  I think it kept them laughing through their whole dinner that night ;).  Ah, the joys of parenting.