Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The Dishwasher

One of those parenting things I never expect to work but that does: Jack used to love to get in the dishwasher - clean or dirty, glass dish, steak knife, he was messing with it all and all I could do (besides yell and scream and create a huge tug of war) was close it half way and encourage him to "close it." As the months progressed you can imagine how my half hearted attempts started to feel ineffectual and like I was losing and losing my mind to boot.

But lo and behold, the funny thing now is that I can't keep the dishwasher OPEN for more than 45 seconds as Jack hears the faint rustle of dishes and runs from miles around to come and proudly and securely "Close it!" often with the accompaniment of crashing and clanging as he doesn't put the shelves in before he closes the door.

3 comments:

Maggie said...

Cute! See if you can get him to hand you pieces of silverware one-by-one. (Remove the steak knives first.) Gus loves this little job, and it is actually pretty helpful!

diane said...

A fine example of a good idea taking root in fertile soil and morphing out of control.

Lori said...

Ben does the same thing! Only he came up with it partly on his own. He still likes to play with parts of the door and the dish racks and will sometimes grab things, but getting him to close it works well. He's kind of anal-retentive about open doors, actually. He'll try to close the refrigerator when I'm actually leaning in getting things out, and I'm like "I'm *in* here!" He's another out-of-control closer.