Digging For Treasure

My five-year-old daughter's room could be called the Pit of Despair. It's nothing more than a storage room for her toys, her bed, and her clothes. She never plays in it, never sleeps in it, and only uses it to throw her toys in after she's done playing with them. I don't know why she refuses to sleep in that room, but she's now taken up residence on the living room couch. She inevitably crawls in between my husband and I in the wee hours of the morning and I end up getting kicked for my last few blissful hours of sleep. But since kindergarten is starting a little more than a month from now, I need to get her back in her room, make her comfortable so she wants to sleep in it, and convince her that her room can be a wonderful place - a place to dream and play, to read and draw, a haven for her amidst the chaos of life. That's what my room was for me and I hope she can have the same thing.

On the way home from work and daycare yesterday, we talked about what we need to do to her room to get it to that point. I suggested painting it, specifically, painting clouds on the ceiling. She wanted to put Care Bears in those clouds, but I didn't think my artistic talents would stretch that far. And she also wanted Hello Kitty wandering around her walls. We're going to make a trip to Menards or Wal-Mart to get some ideas.

So I was rather excited to start tackling her room last night and get things going. But I had no idea what I was getting myself into! This child has saved everything. I found rocks, tops of acorns, pop bottle caps, Kleenex boxes (with the Lion King), and bits and pieces of paper, broken crayons, pencils...you name it, I found it. I threw away a bunch of stuff - broken toys, toys that had the parts missing and I didn't want to take the effort to find all of them, and lots of other stuff. I took toys still in one piece that she never plays with and put them in a basket to donate to Good Will or some other place.

We got through the toy box and then I went through her various "catch-alls," boxes full of an assortment of little treasures. She decided to put everthing that she still wants from the toy box in two plastic grocery sacks. I've still got to go through her storage area where there are an assortment of puzzle pieces, paper, and odds and ends.

But the best thing by far of the entire evening was watching her climb into the toybox (which was mine as a little girl) and peek her head out. I have a picture of me doing the exact same thing with the exact same toybox.

I was so exhausted by the end of the evening and I'm not even done yet. Hubby even went and bought me some Ben and Jerry's Frozen Lowfat Yogurt (yup, the Chocolate Fudge Brownie kind!) and I was too tired to eat it.

BUT

I did manage to drag myself down to the basement, do some laundry, and write a page and a half. I was in bed by 10:30 and fell asleep thinking about my synopsis, and in my dreams, I was eating warm chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. :-)