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Children love to explore their environment, experiment, and enjoy sensory filled activities. I know this all too well. As a former preschool teacher of eight years and now a stay at home mother of five; I've been well trained not to get into situations that still seem to happen sometimes. While the older two kids were off to school for the day I decided to get some of the house work done. Taking care of a large family can be time consuming, and with my hubby away in the military it falls to me to make sure that everything gets done. I put the three little ones in front of their favorite cartoon show, Dora the Explorer. (They are 4,3, and 2 years old.) Normally we don't watch very much television. I try to keep the kids busy with other activities like coloring, reading, and playing games; so I thought they would enjoy the special treat of getting to watch their show. When I turned it on they were so excited. They all sat down and started to sing the songs along with the characters. I got the baskets of laundry from the bedrooms and brought them down to the laundry room where I began sorting out the colors and loading up the first of the wash. The kids were a little too quiet. The kind of quiet that means they're up to something. When I went back upstairs to check on them I discovered that my son(age 3) had gotten into the refrigerator and taken out the two large containers of strawberry yogurt we had just bought the day before. He had taken the yogurt into the living room and dumped both containers out all over the carpet where he and his sisters were enjoying smearing it all over! What a mess! 32 oz. of yogurt all over the dark green carpet, the couch, chair, and coffee table. I scooped, scraped, and scrubbed as best as I could to get it all up. In the end I had to go to the store the very next day to purchase a carpet steamer to get the rest of it out before it started to spoil and stink up the house. Luckily I've already gotten my money's worth out of the steamer, since I clearly didn't learn from that mistake. There was the gallon of milk they dumped out in the girls' bedroom, the bottle of lotion they dumped in my bedroom, and dish soap they took into the boys' room. So now I do laundry at nap-time or after bedtime and we've started doing more things like: play-dough and cooking projects during the day to keep them stimulated and out of trouble. We've also added daily walks to the park to help get out some of that extra energy before nap-time.

Learn more about this author, Katrina Norman.
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