My Little Helper

My daughter is such a little helper these days.

Putting her laundry in her hamper has always be a toddler chore since she has been walking.  When I’m folding laundry, she helps out by putting all of our socks in our sock bin.  And she will happily put her bibs away now that we’ve put them in a place where she can reach them, and fetches one before every meal. In fact, she helped me out so much with the laundry I decided to move all her clothes within reach, now she can pick out her own pajamas and shirts and coats.  We’ve only had one or two dress-up afternoons, mostly involving shoes.

She also loves mimicking us around the house, she’ll sweep while I clean the kitchen and is very territorial about her job of taking care of the clean utensils out of the dishwasher.  She knows what drawer they go into and sometimes she’ll just hand each to me one at a time and other times she will walk them over.  Anna is also a professional shoe-fetcher and sock-taker-offer.  (She is surprisingly good at the former, even telling which pair is who’s, and surprisingly enthusiastic about the latter).  And if there is any counter-wiping to be done you can bet Anna will be right beside me with a paper towel in hand, scrubbing the front of the cabinets or refrigerator.  It is a good thing, too, otherwise they would never get clean!

I think my favorite helping of Anna’s is when she helps children younger than her.  When she brings over a doll that was dropped, like at Andrew’s party, or chases after a ball that rolled away.  She is so gentle with little ones, but excited too.  I was holding a young boy at a playground playdate and Anna came over and gave him a great big hug.  I think her plans were to carry him herself but I kept it to a hug.  Sheesh, she just melts my heart.

Our friend Andrew just turned two. We celebrated with party hats, a tractor cake complete with donut tires, and balloon volleyball.