Helping Hands

You might be surprised sometimes where you might find some helping hands. What started out with me finding something for Nicole to do to keep her out of Chris’ hair while I was doing the dishes turned into me being impressed by her eagerness to help. In my urge to always get things done quickly so I could move on to the next thing lately, I had forgotten what I had previously considered So Important… letting her help. Letting her help at this age does not necessarily mean tasks are going to be done faster or properly. But it does set good habits that I will be grateful for when she is a bit older, and she is already starting to surprise me with how helpful she can actually be.Last night, she first helped me load the dishwasher. This does mean that I set aside certain dishes for her to load, like cutlery and plates and cups, that I could load myself in the same amount of time. Oh well! She enjoys helping me, and I enjoyed her eagerness to help. She’s been helping me unload for ages, and even gets annoyed at me when I do ‘her things’… the cutlery (after I pull out the knives) and the big pots, which go in the stove drawer.

Then I started doing the hand washing. “What’s next, mommy?” I would have handed her a few things to “dry”, even though I tend to let things drip dry, but the laundry monster had eaten all the drying towels. (hehe… I’m mostly caught up, honest! But since I let things drip dry, those hit last priority.) So instead I let her wash the table for me (after I gave it a quick wipedown first so it would really be done.) “What’s next, mommy?” I am going to endorse another Norwex product here… the mop. The handle easily goes from long to short and back again, so I made it Nicole-sized and let her go at. If you observe the lines on the floor, clearly my floor has not been mopped to pristine. But hey, if I let her do it every day, it should be clean by the end of the week, yes? LOL

Once she dubbed that complete, I assigned her to wash the windows in the livingroom, and she did a pretty good job of what she could reach. Then she moved on to wash the walls, or at least a portion of them, and once I ran out of other things, she washed the chairs. (This was probably more ‘water play’ than actual cleaning, but it entertained us both.) I finished the hand washing at some point in there, but her eagerness to work inspired me to scrub down my cupboards as well, plus a few other tasks I don’t need to do every single day.

I have resolved to make a point of letting her help me more often again. In the craziness of having a baby I forgot to do some of that kind of thing with her, but it really is so important. Done in good spirits, it allows us to bond, while setting good habits for her future. It also sets good habits for myself, I’ll admit I leave a lot of tasks for the next morning that I would feel much more refreshed in the morning if I just did them the night before! So, I can keep her busy after supper and before bedtime, without getting her hyped up or setting her in front of the tv. (Which she has watched less than three hours of in the last two weeks, yay for us!) I’m sure a lot of you are like, “Well, duh.” But for me it was a bit of an ‘oh, yeah…’ ;)

And of course, lets not forget my other little helper, who helped me fold laundry after the first one had gone to bed. Yup, she can already do short spurts in her Bumbo chair! Little turkey… I don’t think she realizes she is not even two months old yet. My babies really do not like to stay babies… Nicole was the same way. Actually, I think Olivia is a little “worse” for it than Nicole was! I’d like to take a moment, too, to be grateful to be very blessed with a good sleeper. This girl likes to have a late bedtime, but she goes down before midnight every night (generally around 11) and does not get up until 5:30, and she’s done it since she was four days old. I’m also already able to sleep train her, and now have her to the point where I can lay her down sleepy and she’ll put herself to sleep unassisted. Most of the time without even a soother! I’m so very, very blessed that my second is such an easy baby.