August 30, 2009

Bubby is at the age now where I keep being reminded of a story I used to love when I was a little girl. It was called something along the lines of "The Very Big Helper". It was about a little girl who was at the laundry mat with her Mom and she desperately wanted to help her mom with the laundry. Her mom of course didn't think she was big enough to help, so instead the poor little girl just kind of kept getting into trouble by riding the laundry carts, and playing with the candy machines and all the other things a kid would do if they were stuck in a laundry mat all day long!

On one of her many mischievous adventures she ends up meeting a kind of shady looking man with a weird mustache, who tells her she can come and help him with his laundry, and he teaches her how to fold all of his socks. Of course in the end the little girl becomes a "Big Helper" after all, and the story ends with hopes and illusions that maybe next time they come to the laundry mat her own mother will let her fold all of their socks. I don't know why this story was such a favorite of mine, but it was.

So anyway...in order to keep my own child from going out on mischievous adventures and finding his own semi-shady looking man with a mustache who offers to teach him how to do things I think he is too little to do, I've decided to go ahead and let him do some of those silly things that he, for whatever reason, wants to "help" me with.

One of these silly things is loading/unloading the dishwasher. It takes me twice as long usually to do this semi easy task with his help, and sometimes by the time he is done "helping" with some of the silverware or dishes, I just end up putting them back in the dishwasher to be washed again, but who knows? Maybe he'll grow up to LOVE doing dishes. In any case, I can rest a sure he isn't out learning how to load a dishwasher from some weird-o that he meets in an appliance store.