I caught the bug yesterday. You know, that overwhelming urge to purge and organize stuff around your house. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you have to listen to it. It was time to clean up the mass amounts of colourful, plastic toys, including some leftover baby stuff and make room. I’m not talking about making room for more. Just make room, period. It seems as though the toys multiply themselves, and soon you’re tripping over blocks and dolls and crayons and it just never seems to stay clean, no matter how hard we try.

Now that the Little Mouse is two and the Little Bird is turning five next week, we had to get it cleaned up. My kids have a lot of stuff, and at some point we seemed to have inherited more stuff that used to belong to my nephews. A large kitchen/bbq has been taking up real estate in the kids’ playroom, read: our family room, for some time now and it had to go. Any parent will tell you that usually the kids play with the same things over an over. So yesterday, we decided to tackle the stuff! Some of it went in the garbage; broken pieces and bits and bobs of things we had no idea of where they came from, or what they had been originally.  There were some things that went into the recycling bin; like colouring books that had no more blank pages. And there the keepers; baby toys or things that they no longer played with, that went downstairs in storage.

The kids helped out too…well the Little Bird helped. The Little Mouse loved playing with the things she hadn’t seen in a long time, because they were in the bottom of the toy box. We organized an area for all the babies they had, including clothes and accessories, such as bottles and diapers. We created an area for dress-up and one for all those Little People and other toys.

Looking around last night after it was all done I felt a small pang of sadness. The baby stuff is gone…and they are growing up. They prefer sit and colour together on their little table, or play with babies instead of blocks. It made me realize how quickly time flies. It was around the time our Little Bird was two years old, when we found out we were expecting again, so the toys just sort of got shuffled, but never actually put away, as the Little Mouse would going to play with them. But now it’s time to put them away.

It made me think of a song I used to sing to the girls when they were babies. When I first became a mom, I couldn’t think of any lullabies to sing, but for some reason, this Harry Connick, Jr. song was always in my head. I learned the classic lullabies quickly after that, but I thought this song was cute; my husband and I came together to create these beautiful creatures, and therefore I think we have a pretty good recipe.

Did you ever sing a specific song to your little ones? What was your favourite?

Enjoy your Monday!

Recipe For Love

By: Harry Connick, Jr.

A little bit of me and a whole lot of you
Add a dash of starlight and a dozen roses, too
Then let it rise for a hundred years or two
And that’s the recipe for making love

It doesn’t need sugar ’cause it’s already sweet
It doesn’t need an oven ’cause it’s got a lot of heat
Just add a dash of kisses to make it all complete
And that’s the recipe for making love

And if you’ve made it right you’ll know it
It’s not like anything you’ve made before
And if you’ve made it wrong you’ll know it
‘Cause it won’t keep you coming back for more

I didn’t get it from my grandma’s book upon the shelf
I didn’t get it from a magical and culinary elf
No, a little birdie told me you can’t make it by yourself
And that’s the recipe for making love