Squirreling

Every morning Betty goes downstairs and empties all her little pots, pans, plates and hundreds of pieces of play food (all of which come from different sets) into her toy pushchair and toy shopping trolley. Once she has done this, which takes her about two seconds, she doesn’t play with it all, she just leaves it and goes off and does something else, but if you dare try to put it away during the day she gets very cross.

Every evening before she goes to bed I get her to tidy it all away, but because of my slightly obsessive nature, she doesn’t quite do it to my standards, and so I end up spending ages putting everything back in their rightful little sets before I can sit down and relax.

Last night I decided that all the food items and pans etc were going to go into hiding for a while to save me some work. This morning Betty went downstairs and I heard her opening the cupboard that normally houses all the aforementioned items, and I waited for her to call out that they were missing. However, she was silent. Phew I thought, I have successfully solved the problem.

Later I went into the sitting room to find that in the absence of her food items she had loaded up the pushchair and trolley with ANYTHING she could lay her little mitts on; loo rolls, cellotape, books, the pepper grinder, my keys, hoover attachments, soap, puzzle pieces etc, thus creating even more work for me. I have to hand it to her, she will not be outsmarted, and is incredibly resourceful.

This evening I plan to hide the trolley and the pushchair.