Our little helpers

Walker and Ellie have both been great helpers lately. On my off-Fridays or on Saturdays when Carla's at school, I can give them jobs and they actually do them. Not only that, they get really excited when I say "It's time for Jobs!" Like if I would have said "It's time for Ice cream" or something. They get really competitive, too. They race around the house putting shoes or pillows or silly six pins away and they race back to me for their next job. It gets pretty rough sometimes but I figure, what's the big deal about a little blood on the carpet if the rest of the house is presentable? It's also fun to stand in the kitchen yelling at them like a drill sergeant. They think it's funny and I think I don't care if I sound like an idiot as long as they're cleaning.

But then . . . Ellie mopped. No big deal, right? She's seen Mommy do it like a dozen times and Daddy do it like a thousand. Except that instead of a mop she used a broom. And instead of a mop bucket she used a toilet. She and the floor were both totally soaked but she was proud of herself for "helping" so we couldn't come down on her too hard.

Walker also helped me fix the lawn mower over the weekend. On Saturday, I had him gather up some fisher price tools and come out and hammer the wheels while I cleaned the carburetor. Then yesterday, I was working on it again and he came outside with the exact same tools again and proceeded to hammer on all the wheels. Once we got it fixed, I let him drive it around a little (while I held him, of course). He's really good at it, actually, but he tries to talk to me while he's driving and I can never hear him. I was having him park us in the shed and he was saying something I couldn't make out. Then he started looking really worried and saying "Please. Please!" It turned out he was asking me to slow down and the poor little guy must have thought I wouldn't do it unless he asked nicely. Oh well, no wrecks and he parked us just fine after I eased off the throttle a little.