My Little Helper

Tyler has always been a great helper. He loves to help clean. Whenever I am cleaning up the kitchen he needs a baby wipe to wipe things down with me. He also helps me clean the tables at church everyday. With laundry he helps me put the laundry into the washer, then into the dryer, and then helps me sort it all. The other day he found a new way to help - dishes.

We had just finished lunch and I was cleaning off the table when Tyler scoots his chair over to the sink. He then takes our sponge, turns on the water, and starts cleaning his plate and rinsing out his cup. He does the "dishes" at least once a day now. It usually consists of him filling his cup with water and then pouring it out - over and over again. Since Tyler does the dishes, Carter likes to try too. Unfortunately he doesn't have it down quite yet so usually water is all over Carter when he is done.

The boys have been having issues lately with not staying in their rooms at bedtime, not falling asleep at nap time, and then coming out of their rooms way to early in the morning. This weekend we tried to work on these things. First we put some toys up in their room. Before now the boys didn't have any toys in their rooms except for all the animals they sleep with. So we put up quiet toys - books, puzzles, cars, and legos. We told them they were not to play with the toys during bedtime, but they could play quietly during nap time and when they woke up in the morning. Next we got a wall clock for their room. I put stickers on the 7 and the 12 and told them when the hands were on the stickers they were allowed to come out. I was anxious about this, thinking it may make things worse, but I thought we should at least give it a shot.

So far it has worked great. Tyler is great at cleaning up his toys in his room so far and on Sunday he played so quietly in there I thought he was asleep. When I went to check on them Carter was dead asleep and Tyler was happily playing. So that he could get some sort of a nap I put him in our room (where he naps most days now) and he was out in less than 5 minutes. In the morning I usually have to tell them once or twice to go back until the hands touch the stickers, but then they happily play in there until then. We are still working on not coming out of bed during bedtime, but its starting to click in I think. I am very impressed on how well they are doing with this. Life is good.