Little Miss Helpful

Anna's favourite hobby at the moment is to help around the house.

She helps on so many household chores. I think she started to get the idea when Goo-Goo (her Great Nan) gave her an iron, ironing board, mop, dustpan and brush and broom for Christmas.

She loves helping me load the washing machine and carry the washing basket, which is fully loaded, to the dryer. She tries to help me by passing me all saucepans and utensils (obviously not knives etc!!) as I'm cooking and she does try to help with the dusting although, due to her medical history, I get rather nervous about that one. She also loves putting things away, which she believes are in the wrong place. For example, the other night I had got a recipe book out to refer to and when I turned round, it had disappeared. I thought I was going mad as I had remembered getting it out. Eventually, after lots of scratching of the head and turning the house over, wondering where I had put the damn thing, I eventually found it back on the shelf. I seem to spend half my life looking for things which have moved and it is not unusual to find my boots in some unused cupboard or a whole toilet roll in my handbag!

At Christmas, Anna astonished everyone when we looked out of the window to see her carrying logs to the wheelbarrow, helping my dad to get firewood. My dad was carefully handing her small twigs but Anna soon got bored of that so decided that she would choose her own logs and started to carry logs which even I struggled with. The way that she flung them into the wheelbarrow would suggest that Anna was not struggling one bit! The gigantic smile on her face for the entire time that she was doing it would also suggest that she was rather enjoying it!

However, it has now reached the point where Anna likes to use her own initiative and be a little more independent in her household jobs! For example, I walked into the kitchen this morning to find Anna putting the entire contents of my ironed and neatly folded laundry back into the wet washing machine. There has also been the occasion when I was washing up some dirty plates, turned around and noticed that Anna had emptied the entire cupboard of cereal and other food products and was re-locating them into the recycling bins!

Of course, I can't be annoyed with her because she is only trying to help so, instead, I smile and say 'Thank you so much darling'.

The only curious thing about it all is that Anna never ever seems to keen to tidy her toys away so our house always looks like a ransacked Early Learning Centre, as James walks in and goes flying down the hallway after tripping over Bramble the hobby horse! We think Anna does it on purpose, just so that she can see her Daddy doing his flying acrobatics routine. Well, it amuses Anna anyway!