Here's a question? Why do I encourage my children to help out? We all know that it takes three times the amount of time to put the laundry away when you have to keep saying, "Put this in the sock drawer", "Put this in the underwear drawer", "Put this in the pants drawer, but not on top of the shorts, on the side where the rest of your pants are." And the clothes always get unfolded to boot!
In fact, I'm not sure why I even try cleaning at all (many of you may even assume that I don't clean if you happen to arrive at my house unannounced mid-week. Liam likes to help with the coffee tables so I on the rare occasions that I am actually able to clear off the table from all of the books, puzzles, socks, (my) schoolwork, mail, etc... I let him clean it off. He uses the (Simply Green) spray bottle to lather up the glass (mind you, this coffee table was bought before having kids- thus the glass insert). Then he uses a single piece of paper towel to soak it all up. Even Brawny isn't that absorbent. So he mops it all up, while splashing onto the carpet and surrounding furniture and then decides to do a second coat. Miraculously the stains tend to survive although very little Simply Green window cleaner is left in the bottle after a cleaning session.
Tonight Joshua decided to help me cooking. Which is very nice because I have very poor time management skills in the kitchen and could use a little back-up support. Unfortunately Josh decided to help out with matters relating to the oven. The oven was turned onto 400 degrees to roast tomatoes for a home-made sauce (can't help but brag- I made a home-made sauce with fresh tomatoes from scratch- unfortunately the allotted 1 1/2 hours was insufficient and at 7 pm I realized that I had forgotten to make the pasta or a meat). I looked behind me as I was chopping up the onions and saw that Joshua had on an oven mitt and was saying "hot hot hot hot..." and I thought that was awfully cute. I went back to chopping onions, got one of those strange motherly instincts, turned around and saw that Joshua was opening up the oven. It only opened up a crack but please do imagine my freak-out. In response, Joshua said "But I was using the hand with the oven mitt!" No, just kidding. Really, he's only 18 months old so in response he screamed and cried very loudly and refused to forgive me for saving his life for the next 30 minutes.
I really should learn my lesson one of these days. After all, two little helpers and my big bad idea was what broke our vacuum cleaner (picture Liam vacuuming while Joshua sat on the canister; which was all sorts of fun until Liam had to pull the vacuum forward. This sounds very mischievous, doesn't it? Until I mention that this was my idea for a game to engage my two helpers. So it was all my fault).
But I do think children helping is a rather good idea in theory. Since they were able to sit up, I've had them help put things away. Joshua throws his own binky into the crib or his bottle into the crib. I admit I've even had him throw away his own diapers before! Liam enjoys using the hose to water our plants in the front yard. And sometimes he even hits the plants with the water rather than flooding the driveway. And when all else fails and simple jobs take me three times as long, I always just remind myself about how appreciative Liam and Josh's future wives will be that I instilled some cleaning skills in my boys.
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