An Additional Reason to Vacuum

The first reason is that Margaret is unaccountably fascinated by the process of vacuuming, and so, of course, it is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser on that front.  And so I try to do a little of it every day for her, but the problem is that Margaret also likes spreading her things over as much square footage as possible, which is a slight hindrance when it comes to vacuuming.*

The second reason for vacuuming, though, is that Ellie appears to think it’s wonderful.

Or at least very boring. 

*And those of you lovely people who are going to suggest that I use vacuuming as a reward to get Margaret to pick up her toys, OF COURSE I haven’t thought of that, but Margaret is impervious to that kind of suggestion.  I think that her understanding of time is not nuanced enough.  For her there is “right now,” “yesterday” [in the past], and “this afternoon” [sometime in the future].  There’s no sense of immediacy, and so “if you pick up your toys, I’ll vacuum” gets about as much traction as “when you’re 18, you’ll go to college.”