Chores

Piggybacking on Rachel's desire to help all the time with everything, I announced last week that she would have a new chore to do every Tuesday night -- empty all the wastebaskets in the house for garbage pickup, which comes early enough Wednesday morning so that we get all the recycling carts and bins to the curb on Tuesday night.

I reminded her of this last night, and tonight she remembered. We stayed way too late at Sunnyside Park (more on that later) so dinner and dessert were late, and I really should have gotten her to bed earlier but...I was determined to follow through on my resolution to give her an organized way to be helpful around the house. (Bed-making and room-cleaning are also a frustration of mine, but we need to get her a big-girl bed and better storage options before we tackle that particular monster).

She really was quite cheerful about it; she went straight to the section under the sink where we keep the garbage bags; we walked to her bedroom and our bathroom and our bedroom, and I demonstrated how to lift the full garbage bags out of the cans and replace them with new bags. Then she took them to the big garbage can in the kitchen, pushed them down, and I lifted the kitchen bag and tied it. THEN she offered to carry it to the garbage can in the garage, and she insisted on helping me take the cans and the bins to the curb -- even though it was dark and scary. (I had her carry a broken lingerie drying rack that we needed to get rid of).

As she gets older we will give her more and more responsibility. My goal is to have her cook a simple dinner once a week by the time she's 9 (she can graduate to more complicated food when she's in high school), which will include grocery shopping and budgeting with Daddy. We don't have a lot of money to pay for extracurricular activities, so I am determined to teach her critical life skills before she heads off to college -- as well as impart the idea that she is part of a team, and as such is expected to contribute sweat equity to make this house and all of our lives function smoothly. She's going to have to learn that  in school and the workplace soon enough!

And, hopefully, the more we expect her to do at an earlier age, the more she will meet those expectations -- especially during the impossible teen years when we will expect her to mow the lawn, weed, vacuum, clean the bathroom every week, etc.

***

Rachel agreed with me tonight that it was too chilly to go to the pool but that she wanted to head to Sunnyside Park in Southeast Portland, one of her favorite parks. "I hope I meet a friend there," she said.

This is Rachel, right? OF COURSE she made a friend -- 7-year-old Phoenix, a boy I at first mistook for a girl because he/she had long hair. He was quite gracious correcting me and invited Rachel to play "stuffed animal tag," which involved throwing a soft gray Uglydoll at the other person to hit them. It doesn't matter, apparently, if you get it dirty -- it can be washed. They played the game for about a half hour, and at one point I joined in, holding my own pretty well. "Wanna meet my little sister?" Phoenix asked Rachel at one point, and he put his arm around her (which was breathtakingly cute and wistful all at once) and led her to his cute, 11-month old, red-haired sister, Zia. "She has hair like Tia Daniella did at that age!" Rachel observed.

At one point Phoenix wanted to get a drink of water and Rachel yelled, "I"m going to the water fountain!" and then dashed off with him. For some reason that made me a little sad -- she took off without thinking, just the start of many, many trips she'll take without me as she explores the wider world. What happened to the little baby I gave birth to 4 years ago??