At what age....

...do kids play with one toy and then put it away before they take out the next toy? Ben, Jack and Drew were playing nicely in the basement for a couple of hours the other day. So, what does a good mom do when her kids are playing nicely in the basement??? Of course, she leaves them alone and enjoys the peace, especially when it coincides with naptime for child #4.

I'll just say that "mommy free time" has a price. This is what my basement, or should I say *Spencer's* basement looked like when I finally did go down to see what they were up to.

By the time I got down there, they were playing Hullabaloo. If you know what Hullabaloo is, this is more like Extreme Hullabaloo. To get from one space to the next was like participating in an obstacle course. They even did it on purpose, where you had to climb things to reach certain spaces. It was crazy.

Luckily, even though at 6 years old, they don't get the concept of putting things away before you play with something else, they do get the concept of cleaning up! I added the incentive of a few M&M's with an additional M&M for every minute less than 20 minutes that it took them to clean up. They finished in 19 minutes and 12 seconds. Even though it wasn't much less than 20 minutes, they did have Charlie un-cleaning a bit, and they did end up doing a very good job so, they did receive some bonus M&M's.