Teenage Boys are from Mars

I gotta say... Superdad and I have really stepped up our game.

We are both on the same page of demanding encouraging more responsibility and participation in household chores from our crew and all of our nagging effort is really starting pay off.

Dishes are routinely being cleared to the sink.  We are working on Step 2- putting the dishes in the dishwasher- which we've discovered will require a series of home management lessons entitled: How to Determine if the Dishes in the Dishwasher are Clean or Dirty. Who knew that was such a puzzle?

Timothy appears to have established his own once-a-day routine for gathering all of his water bottles and garbage from the downstairs and depositing them into the appropriate receptacles.  Once-a-day is totally A-Okay with me.

While Annie and I were spending time with family on the Other Side of the Mountains again, the boys were given the responsibility of keeping the pup adequately exercised and loved. They performed their duties admirably and seem to have developed a deeper bond with our fluffy, funny guy as a result.

We have yet to tackle meal planning and preparation but those tasks will be easier to incorporate into our routine once we have a routine again. In other words, once school starts.

So, I'll say it again...we are making progress around here!

But part of being able to celebrate these baby steps toward greater independence is accepting that success may not always look exactly the way you envisioned.

After our "failure to communicate" and providing a bit more "education" as to what a clean room entails, Jack promised he would give it another go in the very near future. True to his word, I received a text while I was away, complete with photos, of his new and improved room.  Not only did Jack make great strides in getting his room picked up and reorganized, he went one step further and cleaned out his closet and dresser of all the clothes that no longer fit him. When he informed me that he had a bag of clothes ready to be donated, I sent him back a text telling him where he could take the clothes and drop them off.  Next thing I know, I receive another text informing me that the donation drop off was complete.

I told him, You know what that's called, Jack? Finishing the job!! Woohoo!!

I'm not sure his level of enthusiasm matched mine.

The photos of his freshly cleaned room were definitely a pleasure to behold. I particularly appreciated that he included a shot of his windowsill, devoid of plastic bottles and soda cups. He really hit all the angles so I could see that he hadn't just piled all of the garbage into a corner and then photographed the rest of his room.

The kicker is that in the process of cleaning his room, Jack also decided to do a little rearranging of his furniture.  This has occurred several times over the years and I am always impressed with his creativity for coming up with new arrangements in a relatively small space.  A particular favorite of mine was when he came up with Mega-Bed which involved pushing his two twin beds together and turning the mattresses horizontally across both beds, resulting in a quasi-queen-size bed.  It didn't look comfortable to me but he left it that way for a good six months, so he must have thought it was just fine.

But this new layout really takes the cake.

Standing in the doorway of his room you wouldn't find anything amiss...

But take a few more steps into his room and you would know for certain that you are in the dwelling place of a teenage boy.

Because a teenage boy, and ONLY a teenage boy, would think that this is a good idea...