Assistant Mom

Today was "Take Your Daughter to Work Day" at our house. You are probably thinking... "But you are a 'Stay-at-home Mom', isn't that just like any other day?" Well, the answer is no, not quite. Today the Tumbleweed got to be my assistant, and helped me while I did "Mommy things". When I first asked if she wanted to do this (7:00 this morning) she said "Sure. Let's do Scrapbooking" Unfortunately for her, that was not the first thing on my list for today. I wish it could have been.

She did a little more thinking and decided that Mommy does laundry. So that's where we started --- she sorted the kids laundry into lights & darks. She did that quite well - she might get to keep that job.


While she was sorting laundry, I was trying to think of other things she could help with. Since I knew we needed to get to the grocery store today, I decided to let her cut coupons. I was a little nervous that she would cut off the expiration dates or bar codes, but she didn't. She even did really well at picking which items we usually use and only missed 2 restaurant coupons.


After the coupons were all clipped, she got to make a grocery list. She took this very seriously, and at first I though it was going to take me 8 sheets of paper and the rest of the day to accomplish this task. Fortunately she was also excited about going to the store, so I was able to convince her to go get dressed & make her bed after 6 items.


Her next task was to get the Dandilion ready to go. This was a bit of a challenge (as it always is) but she did manage to get one of his socks on before he ran away. Then we switched the laundry before heading out to do errands.


We headed to CVS first, and then to the grocery store. She proudly carried her list through the store and made sure we got all of the things on her list. She is very good at identifying what is on sale, so she was very excited when I helped her read the sale sign on the bread "Buy One, Get Two Free!" (insert math lesson here). Later she had her usual conversation with the "payer" (what she calls the check-out person) as we unloaded the groceries and watched them get rung up.


When we got home, she switched the laundry one more time, but was a little reluctant to help put the groceries away. She did a few of her favorite things...


and then declared that she "just wants to be a kid for a while"... and that's OK with me. While I enjoyed the help, it will probably be a lot faster to fold laundry by myself.