Mommy's Big Helper

I usually don't get too serious or talk about parenting on my blog, but I came to a very big revelation this week. I try to do a lot of different activities throughout the day with Cole to keep him busy, to teach him new things, and let him explore the world, but I've always been somewhat concerned about things (mainly him and my house) getting messy or him hurting himself or breaking something that I've kind of been holding back. This week I decided just to let go. As long as he's having fun and his attention is on one task and he's leaning and exploring, and not hurting himself of course, then it really doesn't matter what else happens and I can deal with it later. Now, you're probably thinking, THAT was your "big revelation" shouldn't you have already realized that by now? And, I guess I did to a certain extent, but not to the degree that I know now.

So, with this parenting post come a series of pictures and a video of Cole being Mommy's Big Helper and LOVING every minute of it! It all started with spaghetti sauce. I needed to make some and Cole needed attention. In comes my brilliant idea...get out the step stool, a small cutting board, and his baby knives and get him in the kitchen helping. Cole's first job was taking the stems off of the mushrooms and then he put in the tomatoes, the sauce, the wine and stirred it all up. He was intrigued the entire time and even though it probably took double the time, it was so worth the learning experience and the fun in the end.

Cole's sauce was SO DELICIOUS!

The next night I went in to make dinner and Cole ran and got the step stool and drug it over to the counter to "help". There wasn't much he could do for this dinner, so I put him on dish duty. Once again, water ALL OVER the kitchen, but oh so worth it. He even had to do the dishes again this morning because it was so much fun.

Tonight, it was pizza though it ended up being less about helping and more about Cole eating all of the ingredients once he realized they were tasty. Still, he stood next to me and was so proud of the pizza we made together.

I'm actually really enjoying the age Cole is right now, though there are still moments of pure frustration, it's so much fun now that he's a little older and he can start helping me. It's just amazing how much he learns everyday and his vocabulary is just exploding. We definitely have a big boy on our hands and not a baby anymore!

He thinks it's so funny to go "nigh night" in our bed after his bath.