OCD Cleaning Girl

^As soon as Adam gets home from work he gives me a kiss and then does flips with Ella, he's been doing this with her since she was pretty much an infant, and she loves it.

He says he won't be doing flips with Baby Boy because he's suspicious that throwing Ella around like this is what caused her to have such insane amounts of energy, but I'm pretty positive that she just came that way. 

^She loves wearing these shoes, which is too bad since they are too small for her, but she loves to put them on and then spin around in circles and watch them until her feet are too sore to wear them anymore.

This is our little OCD cleaning girl.

She has an idea about how things should be and she is not afraid to vocally let us know when things are not looking the way she thinks they should. 

Often, when I put her down for bed she will point at the toys and clothes scattered around her room and yell in a very distressed voice, "Meekah! Meekah" (Clean up! Clean up!) and I will hurridly run around the room and pick everything up so that she can calm down and go to sleep.

Heaven forbid that she has to fall asleep in a messy room!

If I remember to clean everything up before putting her in her bed she is awesome at helping me clean!

She will sing the clean up song and bounce her bum while helping me throw all her toys in their proper baskets.

If there is a mess on the floor she gets very anxious to clean it.

At our home I'll hand her a napkin and she will go over and wipe up the mess and then throw the napkin in the trash can.

But recently we were at a restaurant and she pointed out the mess on the floor at a nearby table and exclaimed that we should, "Meekah!" but I wasn't about to go wipe up the someone else's mess on the floor just to calm her down so I distracted her with some food and assuring her that someone else would eventually clean it up, she seemed satisfied, thank goodness.

Sweeping is a big hit right now, and keeps her occupied for a good 4 minutes, which makes it totally worth sweeping up her even bigger mess after she's done scattering it across the entire kitchen floor. 

She frequently pulls every single washcloth out of the drawer in our kitchen and then, without me telling her, puts it all back in, making sure every last one is stuffed into the drawer, no matter how full it is.

She finds crazy amounts of joy in helping me unload the dishwasher and "helping" to fold the laundry.

And the OCD goes even farther, besides the room needing to be clean when she goes to bed, there are only certain things that are allowed into her bed.

Gerard (obviously) and her blanket (and ONLY her favorite alphabet blanket, no other blanket is allowed, even if it feels exactly the same as her alphabet one, it will be thrown out if it is any blanket besides her ABC one.)

The ABC blanket is always carefully placed in a certain corner of the crib and then she goes to the opposite side of the crib and sleeps there.

Even though she likes to sleep on the opposite side of the bed from her blanket she still likes her blanket to be there.

And she likes to wear PJs but NO socks or anything else that is not part of the usual routine.

If I try to put her to sleep with socks on or with a sippy cup of water or anything else she becomes very distressed and will cry and freak out until I take it our of her bed. 

Only Gerard and blanket are allowed.

It's kind of crazy.

But at the same time, how can I complain about a girl that likes to keep things clean and orderly?

She is the one always reminding me that we should clean up her toys from the tub before she gets out or the mess of books she pulled out before we leave the room.

It's awesome.

Also, she picks invisible things up off the floor and hands them to people, she'll even hand them to strangers.

And she'll do it again and again, rushing to one certain point on the floor and pick up something invisible and then hurry over to hand it to someone and then go back to that same spot and pick up another thing and hand it off to someone.

Who knows what she thinks she's picking up, maybe there are just too few messes in this world for her to clean up and so she has to imagine ones of her own.

Oh man, I love her.

P.S. I finished the "Faves" page at the top.