A little helper

Adelaide loves to help. Ask her to do something? No, no, no way, no. But ask her to help by doing something? Yes! And if you're engaged in a task, be prepared, because what grown-up task couldn't be made even better with some toddler help?

helping mama make cheesecake bars one morning

Of course her desire to help is a wonderful thing, so we try to encourage it as much as possible, even when her help is, um, a little bit less than helpful. Letting her splash away on one side of the sink while I do dishes on the other side? Well worth the water mess. Taking five times as long to load laundry into the dryer because she wants to put it in herself piece by piece? Not a bad price to pay for a buddy who wants to help do laundry. The same goes for her "folding" of the laundry.

helping dada stir the hot cocoa

And maybe the biggest upside to her love of helping? Distraction. One afternoon this weekend, while Adam was away, I felt a meltdown coming on. Well, make that two meltdowns...one for the toddler and one for the mama. The obvious solution? Cookies. Yes, there was lots of "have? help? more?" (Adelaide) and "wait! stop! not in there!" (me). Yes, there was flour everywhere (but, hey, Adelaide helped clean it up after and did a pretty darn good job too!). Yes, it took a bit longer than usual. But boy was it fun! And she was very proud of herself. And I got cookies.

The cookies were these brown sugar cookies from Joy the Baker. Yummy and soft and chewy. They were a hit with the whole family. The only thing I'd do differently next time is to use less ginger. They were good, but the first couple of days they seemed a bit more ginger-spicey than I think is ideal.

 

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