Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Worker bees

The boys and I cleaned out the woodstove last week.

Usually when I say, 'the boys and I blah blah blah,' what I mean is
- the boys spilled flour and fought over the baking powder while I baked cookies
-the boys chopped potato sprouts and pulled baby carrot feathers while I weeded the garden
-the boys put dirty clothes in the dryer and knocked over piles of clean clothes while I did the laundry.
Et cetera.

BUT. Last Thursday, the boys and I really cleaned out the woodstove. They had their little shovels and we took turns scooping ashes into the wheelbarrow. Then they took turns climbing inside (sorry, Mom) and scooping more ashes into my shovel, which I dumped into the wheelbarrow. I kept waiting for them to get tired of it and go play, but they stuck to business til the bitter end. Which actually wasn't bitter at all because we had been having such a nice time together. Then we picked up some wood in the pasture. Well, okay, I picked up the wood but they unloaded ALL of it, even working together to roll the heaviest logs off the end of the tailgate. I couldn't have been more impressed with the little helpers.

"Let's play Tack," Ethan suggested after we had finished. "Okay," I agreed. "How do you play that?" "YOU KNOW," he answered. "We chase everybody and yell TACK."

Man, those boys are cool.

2 comments:

Jenny said...

Can your boys teach my kids how to really help? Because I know the whole dirty clothes in the dryer trick. It's not that fun.

Laura said...

YEAH! After all the messes you have lived through while they "helped" it finally paid off! I am sooo impressed with the whole bunch! That is how children build self-esteem!