Washing Up

Ben decided he wanted to do "washing up" today. Rather than say no, I figured I could just deal with the mayhem afterwards. He did great - it took him easily 45 minutes to wash five things - a plastic tub, a wooden spoon, a cup measure, a lid, and a tablespoon measure. Gloves on, the lot. In this picture he's gloveless because at one point he dropped a glove into the bowl and it got soggy inside, so we hung it up to dry. The other glove came off not long after and it was much easier with bare hands.

Letting Ben wash up was actually a good thing - it kept him occupied while I baked a batch of cupcakes. (My mother-in-law gave me a book of cupcake recipes for Christmas and I feel it is my duty to try each and every one - which I will quite quite happily!) I say it was a good thing, it was until he discovered he could use the cup measure in the picture to pour water down a hole that was not the drain - and pour it straight into the cupboard below.

That's when the washing up stopped ;)


This morning we took AGES to get out of bed. Really ages. And then didn't bother getting dressed for another age. Ben found a penguin that we bought on the long drive home from Manchester before Christmas, and started demanding that we find his fire engine. Penguin and Fireengine go together. They belong together. We bought them together. Ben crashed them into each other while we sat in Starbucks at Oxford services wondering whether we'd make it home that night or not. So we found the fire engine and lo and behold, they crashed into each other :) Harmony was restored among the toys.


This evening Ste and I went out to our church small group meeting, leaving Ben in the capable hands of our babysitters. I had hoped that Ben would be asleep when they got here as he'd not had a nap today, but he got a bit excited when I told him Kathryn was coming to look after him (last time she came round he greeted her with foam swords and they had a great time while we went out!) and so although we got him ready for bed, she put him to bed tonight. No problems again - he's growing up. Kissed us both 'bye and was happy to play.


This whole dropping the daytime nap thing is keeping me on my toes! I think the only time I really would like him to be exhausted and in bed and asleep by 7 is when we have small group at our house. I would like to be part of the meeting, rather than curled up with Ben putting him to bed. But we have a few weeks until then, so maybe by then we'll have sorted out the no-nap-daytimes.