Tuesday, June 07, 2005

We do dishes

A D1 post must be very overdue, at least according to certain relations, I'm sure. Truth is, she's changing so fast I can't pick out few enough things to blog about. In the space of a month, she learned to sit up, crawl, pull herself up, and cruise. She can say about half a dozen words that I can make out--her favorite being "all done!" which she now believes will cause a termination of whatever activity she is getting tired of, including a two-hour car ride. She is learning to feed herself with a spoon, a skill which was progressing quite well until her ability to scoop the food up overran her ability to keep it on the spoon. She is convinced that if she can find her hat she will get to go outside.

Next to going outside, though, her favorite new activity is doing the dishes. This started from, I confess, the basest of parental motives--I wanted to keep her quiet so I could finish the job. But it's working very well. She has figured out that the activity involves transferring dishes from the counter into the sink, so she sets herself to this task while I wash and load the dishwasher. Naturally I have to make sure that only lightweight, non-breakable dishes are within reach. We are also learning that one does not put any stray food items one finds in the dirty dishes into one's mouth.

I'm not so naive to assume that she will always come racing from her play giggling with glee when I announce it's time to do the dishes, but I do have hopes that she'll view it as a normal and not-unpleasant part of life. In the meantime, I enjoy doing the dishes a lot more with company. And I'm a lot more consistent in doing them right after the meal since I know she'll be disappointed if I don't.

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