Boring

Did you know that I'm boring? According to Jillian, I do all the things that are boring around here. Matt took the girls downstairs after dinner last night and was trying to connect the final speaker to his new surround sound system (we are re-doing the basement, part of which includes Matt's beloved TV/movie watching area). Anyway, Adrienne was kind of ornery and clingy (she is a daddy monster right now), so I asked Jillian to just come upstairs and help me for a few minutes. I told her that I needed to finish the dishes and fold some laundry. "That's so boring, Mom", "You do all that boring stuff", and "I don't like anything boring. I like fun stuff" were just a few of the phrases I heard from her. I resisted the urge to go into a lecture about how, yes, those things can be boring but they are important, make everyone's life easy/nice, etc, how I of course would rather do other things, blah blah. But I didn't. Instead I just explained to her that this is part of taking care of our home and our family, and that since she is part of our family, she will need to start helping out a bit. She still wasn't impressed with the non-glamorous idea of helping with the dishes, but I asked her to dry the dishes for the first time (in the past her dish helping has just been clearing the table), and suddenly she was all over it. "Oh wow, yes I can dry the heavy pans. Cool!" She worked hard at drying the pans, and was pleased that she was able to lift them to help me put them away. Then she wiped the table off (pleased that I just handed her the rag and told her to go for it). Finally, I told her I needed some help folding the towels/washcloths so I took her in my bedroom, gave her a quick demo, and she went to town. "Oh Mom! I can do it! I can fold these like a square! I am really good at this!". Yes, she really was. She also got a little sock pairing/folding lesson. My point of the story is this: I don't let her help nearly enough. I am so busy trying to do it all, and do it all my type-A/control freak way, that I miss so many opportunities to develop her independence and skills. And you know what? Those "boring" jobs really are much more fun when she is helping and interjecting her funny little comments. A child's perspective is really so refreshing.

My little helper in action.