So basically my four year old is amazing. Last week I walked into the family room to find Cannon restraining Colton's kicking legs mid-air. Cannon casually glanced over his shoulder and in his best "will you be my helper" voice said, "Hey Mom, can you grab me the wipes? Colton's poopy".
A few weeks before that I had appeared in the family room to find Cannon had folded the entire basket of laundry that was sitting in there. "Look Mom, I folded all the clothes! Then I put them in piles. (Pointing) Braelyn, Conner, Cooper, Caden, Crew, Me, Brooklyn, and Colton! I like folding laundry Mom." I'd like to add that every piece of clothing was in the right pile, and folded pretty darn nicely, too. I'm pretty sure that he is the only one in the house besides myself that could accomplish that feat, Jody included. Of course, had it been a basket of whites and he'd identified which socks went to whom, I probably would have passed out. (Jody once watched me folding socks and told me that I could never die because there is no way he'd ever remember who's socks were who's. Apparently a great deal of my value lies in my sock sorting skills.)
Today I was getting ready to change Brookie's diaper and Cannon quickly discerned that Colton needed changing too. When I went to grab Brooke's new diaper he yelled, "Mom, can you get me a diaper for Colton? They're size 3." It's probable that that little nugget of information is known only to Cannon, myself, and possibly Braelyn (again, Jody included!).
A little while later I had gotten the spaghetti out of the fridge to heat up for lunch. I ran to answer the door and when I came back Cannon was sitting on the counter with the spaghetti all dished out for Brooklyn and himself. He had one plate in the microwave and was trying to figure out how long he should heat up spaghetti! He proceeded to get Brooklyn situated at the table and happily devouring her lunch. When they were done he ran to the kitchen, grabbed a paper towel, got it wet, and offhandedly explained to me that Brooklyn was done and needed to be "washed up". Then he CLEARED both of their places.
So when he matter of factly explained to me that "I don't need you to be in charge. I can do everything", how could I argue with him?
I think I will go and teach him how to sort laundry and start the washing machine.
