Swee’Pea is not a fan of dirt.

For example, whenever we are at the park and she falls down, when she gets up she spends the first few moments carefully wiping her hands to remove the dirt or grass clinging to her tiny palms. The look on her face is one of distress/disgust and she only moves on once her hands have passed inspection.

Furthermore, she has taken a liking to diaper wipes. In the past few weeks, I have twice found her pulling half the wipes out of the package before I could stop her. Truth is, I didn’t try very hard to stop her. She’s damn cute with an arm full of wipes and they keep just as well in a zip lock bag than they did in the original container. What she does with these wipes are varied. Sometimes she will clean herself. She’ll wipe her hands or her face with a wipe, toss it aside, and repeat the process with a new, fresh, cleaner wipe.

Her cleanliness has not been just limited to herself. No, she’s concerned about her surroundings as well. Often times, she’ll take a wipe and proceed to clean our floors with it. Sometimes, I’m tempted to position her in high traffic areas and let her go to work.

She is also a constant reminder that we probably don’t vacuum as often as we should because she’s always finding a small piece of lint, a dried up noodle or any small alien object that obviously does not belong on a our beige carpeting. When she does find something that doesn’t belong, she will pick it up and present it to us for disposal and she fully expects us to dispose of it properly. She’s satisfied when we announce we’re going to put it in the garbage.

Finally, Swee’Pea has a favorite stuffed animal. “Kitty”, a plush beanie cat from Ty, is a frequent companion. In the morning, Swee’Pea likes to take “Kitty” to breakfast with her. I let her because I don’t want to incur any more morning wrath from my little daughter than I have to. The thing is, I often feed the twins chopped up fruit that makes a mess on toddlers and anything that comes in their path. I always tell Swee’Pea that she needs to leave “Kitty” on the table next to her so “Kitty” doesn’t get dirty. Just yesterday, Swee’Pea grabbed “Kitty” from her perch on the table and squeezed tightly right in the middle of breakfast. After her tight hug she closely inspected “Kitty” only to notice that everything was not okay. Her little face became very concerned, bordering on sad. Her eyes narrowed. Her lips pouted. Finally, she uttered one word, in the saddest of voices… “Diiiiirrrty?”

Yep, we cleaned “Kitty” up with a wipe.