My little piglet...

 I know most parents have this problem with their kids (besides my sister), but Jake does not know the meaning of keeping his room tidy at the moment.  I surprised Jake after he'd already climbed into bed, by taking the photos I'd been threatening to share with all of you on my blog for a few days.  The threats didn't work, so I took the photos in an attempt to shock him into clean up mode.  The picture above is him in panic mode as he rushes down from his bed to put a stop to my snapping.  Check the desperate paparazzi hand in camera below...

 For now though, I'm bigger than he is, so I could still hold the camera in the air above my head and shoot away...

 He was not happy.  This is his angry look...

 And his, I'll breath flames of fire at you if you don't get out of my space look...

 But seriously...  do you know that there's actually a wooden viking boat on  his desk?  A wooden fish carving.  All I see is new shoe boxes, presents from Jo & Paul's Greece holiday, go-go's, papers, sweets, gumballs and junk.  To Jake, these things are all treasures, all needing their own place of display...

 This little nook under his bed, he refers to as his den.  It's actually his hiding place for all things he doesn't feel like packing away and doesn't want me to see.  The shelf on the right is all sorts of treasures - trophies, skulls, remote control cars, photos (love that picture of his dad & I dancing at a wedding that shall not be named while I was pregnant with Jake) and a bottle of wine that Jacques made while he was studying at Elsenberg... 

 I know he doesn't have the biggest bedroom  in Cape Town, but he has tons of packing space and I don't think the the floor is where it all belongs.  There are dirty socks there, his school belt & tog bag (bear in mind it's holidays), shoes, crayons, toys, sweets - you name it, it's on the floor in Jake's room. 

Needless to say, his room was tidied up the day after these pictures were taken, but it looks pretty much the same way again right now and he is under strict instruction, that there's NO television, or TV games until his room is cleaned. He can leave it as is for a year for all I care.

My mother will be chuckling as she reads this, because I wasn't the tidiest kid either, so I'm not really the right one to point a finger, but still... I couldn't possibly have been quite this untidy!  On the plus side, at least he is enjoying his things and playing!!

Sue X