Drawrings

The title is not a typo. Think of Mike Myers in the bathtub singing, "Well, you know my name is Simon, and I like to make drawrings."

My girls like to make "drawrings." And now that Lilia is learning to write, she likes to make stories and recipes along with her drawrings. When Kulani and I went on our anniversary date last week, Lilia created this for us:

It's a recipe for chocolate-dipped bananas. It reads:

"Bananas and Chocolate. You put it in the microwave and eat it and wash your face." (I took out the spelling mistakes.)

Then there is a pictorial of the process with a microwave, a person with a dirty face, and then a person with a clean face. At the bottom, she wrote:

"Elissa helped me." Allysa is the babysitter.

The girls are also super easy to manipulate into helping me clean the house. It's embarrassingly simple. It requires an abundance of overexuberant praise.

First I ask them to do just one simple job for me.

I'll say, "How old are you?"

And Lilia will say, "6."

Me: "Okay, since you're 6, pick up six toys from the living room."

Then Lissy will say, "Should I pick up 5 things?"

Me: "Five is a lot. Are you sure you can do it? Let me see if you can first."

They'll each pick up there designated amout, and I'll say, "Holy cow! I did NOT think you guys could handle that, and you did it like you were 7 or 8-year-olds. I wonder if you could pick up 8 things?"

The girls: "I can! I can!"

Me: "Well, let me see first."

Girls get to it lickity split.

Me: "Oh my goodness! I am calling the newspapers to tell them I have two of the best cleaners in the world here at my house! Seriously, you guys are the best!"

And then the girls keep picking up the living room and showing me what else they are cleaning, while I make a pretend call to The Daily Herald.

But seriously, in the whole-wide world, you could NOT find two better cleaners. Now if we could only get Nohea to pull her 2-year-old naughty weight around here.