Aidan the Helper

Aidan is extremely helpful.  Extremely.

I used to worry that if I was unloading the dishwasher he would climb onto the door.  Now I worry that he’ll drop a plate or a dish, breaking it in hundreds of pieces, and cutting himself.  Also breaking my favorite baking dish may cause me to cry, like when he broke my three-tier appetizer plate.

In the last two weeks, I’ve noticed a large increase in Sean’s shirts in the wash.  The boy would wear the same shirt until it rotted off if I didn’t make him change it every morning.  Then the other day I walked into the boys’ room to find out where they were in their morning routine (no where good), and Aidan, freshly dressed, toddled behind me and into the room.  He went over to Sean’s dresser, pulled open the shirt drawer, reached in, pulled out an arm load of shirts, toddled over to the hamper, and dumped them in.  Um.  Well, that solves that mystery.  He toddled back to the drawer to repeat the process.  Ah!

A couple of months ago we were invited to a party where everyone had to dress crazy.  I asked Evan for help.  (Because who would be better?)  Evan got a kick out of the whole process, and now he asks at least once a week if he can pick out my clothes.  I have limited him to shirts and jewelry.  Now that I have a whole bunch of girl superhero shirts, he’s pretty cool with it, and he takes his time deciding on the jewelry, observing one piece, weighing another.  It’s all very cute.

Aidan has observed this, and he has decided he needs to help dress Mama too.  He brings me shoes.  It doesn’t matter if I already have a pair on.  He brings me a shoe.  He taps my foot.  He points to the shoe and waits.  When I finally put on the shoe, he claps and toddles to get the other shoe.  At least I can be thankful he isn’t following Sean’s fashion sense of two different shoes.

I’m not sure if I should be pleased with this whole new stage or worry about which helpful thing he will do next.

Advertisement