Our Mess is the Best~WAGR Wednesdays

As I sit in our new home...well, we've been here for about 2 months now...I look around and am so pleased to be in a cleaner, less cluttered environment.  But it's not easy to do.  Not with a child with WAGR syndrome.  I'm sure my fellow moms and dads can support me when I say that many of our kids can create the best mess around.

It seems reasonable to say that having a child with a vision impairment would lead to more messes...spills, dumps, difficulty in picking this up that have been left around.  But, I actually think it's Evie's sensory issues that create the worst mess of all.  From what I've observed, throwing books, scattering dolls, flinging doctor kits and projecting plastic food and kitchen utensils is an unchallengeable talent of Evie's.  

I can clean her room up every day, but later that same day the books are all out of the book shelf and every toy has been removed from the clear plastic toy box.  (I note that it's clear because I once answered the theory of a therapist that Evie may throw all her toys out because she needed them to be visible.  "Get a clear plastic toy box and I bet that behavior will cease."  No.)

Evie also LOVES to rip up and crumple paper!  Oh joy!  I just finally had to dig out her construction paper because there was an epidemic of tearing and crumpling my good card stock.  At least the construction paper is less expensive...so...GREAT Christmas present idea, everyone!!!

I had heard the suggestion of saving catalogs and phone books to enable Evie to tear those pages.  I did that for a little while, but found that she still would find a simple notebook or, worse yet, her OWN books to tear pages out of.  (I have become quite the book-repair genius, I might add.)

The great thing about our big move is that it gave me a chance to purge a lot of the "flingables" that aren't really played with.  As a matter of fact, I just got her "toy box" put in a closet yesterday...it had been stacked under boxes and was still taped closed by the moving company.  Yes, two months here, and she had never once gone looking for those toys.  

I can tell you that Evie, and possibly Jeff as well, are not too thrilled with my innate desire to keep our new house "clean."  Although, I have found that helping me with things like vacuuming and swiffering floors seem to be favorite activities for Evie.  But, I will typically become quite stressed at the end of the day when I survey the floors in the each room and see scraps of paper, books on the floor, clothes spilling out of closets and the rest of the "art" that Evie has created during the day.  

It's a balancing act.  Do I fry myself each day trying to clean up behind Hurricane Hefty?  Or, do I take a deep breath, tell myself that we'll do the same thing tomorrow and not to waste my time that could be spent doing other thing?  

I roll the dice and let fate decide...