Labor of Love

Allen and I do not like to clean.  Liam, on the other hand, kind of gets a kick out of it.  He loves to help and gets a great deal of satisfaction out of the finished product.  If we did it more often maybe the novelty would wear off and he'd be less interested.  But he does help set the table every day (complete currently with a hug and kiss for his plate) and gets into a pretty big snit if he doesn't get the chance.

So the other day when he wanted to get his "Thomas the Train" set out and build a track I told him he needed to clean some other toys up first.  He still needs a lot of support for this type of cleaning and by the time we got enough done I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get the living room floor picked up enough to vacuum.  Goodness knows it needed it. The overall result was pretty dramatic - for us.  Liam instructed me to take my shoes off in the pantry in order to keep the carpet clean and announced that he was going to get out one toy at a time. 

Here's the track that he did eventually get to build.  It comes complete with a bowling pin. 

Liam also loves to help fold laundry.  Since he insists on doing it and is offended if he notices me refolding his work I have actually been trying to teach him to fold.

His idea of "folded" and mine are sometimes different as this pile of shorts demonstrates.  The plaid ones were my work.  Liam did the rest.

We don't really have room for a designated folding area, so folding while standing by the washer and dryer is our usual habit.  This time we were in the living room which allowed me to actually sit down.  

Liam mostly stuck with standing which came in handy for big stuff like towels.

He doesn't manage to reach quite halfway down, but it's getting close to my ideal.

Here we have a demonstration of the "chin tuck" technique which is crucial to folding laundry without a table.

I'm telling you, this kid is serious about folding laundry.

He may someday be embarrassed by this display of his Starwars Angry Birds underwear, but the process if getting this pair folded is just priceless to me.

Folding it over very carefully....

But the whole thing fell apart and he had to start again.

Voila!  Or as Liam would say "Wala!"  Very respectable.

We made it through the whole basket and then it was time for a snack and a break.

He was still in good spirits.

Now if I were a mommy blogger who was looking for lots of hits and hoping to get pinned on Pinterest I would elaborate on how it's great to get kids involved in household chores and include a handy reference list of developmentally appropriate tasks for different ages.  But I'm not.  I'm just trying to remember and share that at this age Liam loves to do this and is super cute doing it.  So that pretty much covers it.

We're still struggling with Devin's sleep.  I'm really not sure that cutting dairy is going to have the dramatic effect hoped for.  We're ten days out and although he has gone three hours between feedings a few times and generally seems less fussy he still is on a sleep/wake schedule that is extremely hard for me to handle.  I'm going to stick with the plan of avoiding dairy for two weeks then reassess the situation.