Happy Helper

Leah is in the height of the "I can do it myself" stage, and I try my very best to encourage her independence every chance I get.  Even when it makes fantastic messes that I get to clean up- like her above attempt at making lunch today.  Which was delicious, I must say.

She's working on putting on and zipping up her coat, pumping on the swings, becoming more independent in the bathroom, buckling and unbuckling her seat belt, not screaming my name through the house, but instead coming to find me, and the neverending quest to get dressed the first time I ask.  That one is really tricky for her.

She's also full of funny words- my favorite is , "a whole junk of it", which somehow means "a lot".  And she asks, "pretty, pretty pinky please?" and I "double triple want to".  Her enunciation and articulation have always been pretty spot on, so it's funny to hear her say silly things in such a perfectly sensible way.

And she still has a pretty bizarre sense of time- 30 years is hardly more than 5 minutes in her book.  Makes the concept of running late or trying to get somewhere on time pretty much lost on her.

Her independence is something that I know will come naturally, and she is fantastically independent for the most part.  But now, as I observe the things she needs help with while considering that in just a few more months I will be stretched in three directions instead of two, I realize that there are a lot of things that she can do herself if I would just let her.  And there is no time like the present to figure out what those things are!