Mother's helpers - Vol. 2

A while back, I wrote about a couple of Mother's Helpers that I had found and Jake really responded to. He doesn't ask for them as often anymore because we now have two new things around the house that help us out (usually) whenver we need it.

The first one is counting, or more accurately racing. Jake is really big into timers, and he always likes to get things done before the timer goes off. One day when he refused to get ready for school and I couldn't get ready myself because he was hanging on me showering me with love, I asked him if he could go potty before I counted to 100. I gave him a ready, set, go and then started counting. He ran down the hall laughing and went to the bathroom, came back and said "You didn't even make it to 30". I told him that was great and asked him if he could get dressed before I counted to 100, and off he went. We use it for everything now, and he gets such a kick out of "beating" me to making it to 100. Once, while I was counting, I said "...thirty-four...thirty-five...thirty-s..." and he comes tearing through the door saying "Did it! You didn't even get to -ix". He's not got it down to syllables what number I'm on. Pretty cool.

The other helper I've discovered is Jacob! Lately, he wants to help me do everything...load the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher, sort the laundry, putting the laundry in, changing it to the dryer. And thanks to Lara, Jacob is now starting to put away his own laundry, including hanging up his clothes. And just the other day, for the first time ever, he OFFERED to help without me asking. I was so excited I nearly wet myself...but since we are trying to re-teach Jacob not to pee his own pants, I thought that mightn't set a good example. And you wanna know what he offered to do? Hang up Dave's and my laundry.

I think I could definitely get used to this!!