OCD

My little Emma is becoming more like her daddy each day. Charlie is a little OCD, sometimes not so little. When he cleans, he deep cleans. (He removes the seats from cars when he vacuums them.) There is no in between with him. He can sometimes get hung up on little details that most people wouldn't even notice. He isn't too bad and keeps it under control most of the time.

Then there is Emma... She has always been our little rule follower. She likes to know what the rules are, why, and exactly how to follow them. Once it is explained to her she will follow it exactly. It is a little entertaining. It has been interesting to watch her grow up. Lately, she has developed some idiosyncrasies. I will sometimes make her Eggo waffles for breakfast. I will toast, butter, syrup, and cut them for her. Then I will sneak a bite, or Mom tax. She won't be upset, but will tell me I must take another bite because she can only eat even amounts of bites.

She really surprises me when she is given chores to do. Justin used to clear off the table after dinner. He did the bare minimum. He took everything off the table and put it on the counter. We would make him put the salad dressing back in the fridge. Then Emma replaced him in clearing the table. Without being asked she would clear everything off the table. She would find the exact right sized Tupperware container for any left over food and put it away. Sometimes I would make Charlie a plate of food and set it aside for him if he wasn't home in time for dinner. I would turn around two minutes later and it would all be packed neatly in containers in the fridge.

She has been unloading the dishwasher for a few months now. She shares this chore with Justin. Justin puts a lot of the dishes back in the tray in the sink if he doesn't want to bother with figuring out where they go. Sometimes I wonder if he has lived here long. Not Emma. She knows where almost everything goes and she asks if she isn't sure. We have some medium sized bowls that get stacked in three groups of three. She lines them up perfectly and if one is missing she fills them up one stack at a time. She got mad at me once for not following the way she puts things away. I have been using one of the bowls for something else lately. She let me know today that she doesn't like it. I am not allowed to use those bowls anymore until I have all of them stacked back in the cupboard together. I left the room and she came and told me that she had fixed the problem. (Was there a problem?) She had stacked them in two stacks of four. Whew, crisis averted!