Clean up, clean up

Kessa is becoming quite the good little helper.  I mentioned in the giant update of death that I am a horrible mother and give Kessa chores.  Well, this is partially due to her love of helping me.  Most of the time she happily takes her diaper to the garbage and clears off her place at the table.  Sometimes she'll volunteer to start setting the table (though she needs assistance with that) or will come back for more dishes when she's done taking hers to the dishwasher.  More than once I've left the room while she's eating something only to come back to find her putting her plate in the dishwasher.  (Usually taking up as much room as possible.)

You know the clean up song?  "Clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere?  Clean up, clean up, everybody do your share."  Kessa loves it.  It's not uncommon for her to just start cleaning something up then sing, "Keenup, Keenup, evybody, share!"  Or if I'll sing, I'll leave off the last word and let her sing it.  She's pretty darn good at it, too.

She has loved helping with the laundry for a long time now.  Back at our house she loved loading, transferring and unloading the washer and dryer.  It's harder to do here where they have a top-loading washer, but she still loves to sit on the dryer and put the clothes in the washer that I hand her, or pull clothes out of the dryer and put them into a hamper.  She's even been known to help me sort clothes when I'm putting them away by pulling all of hers out, or by shouting out the names of the owners as I hang up shirts ("Daddy shirt!  Mommy shirt!  Daddy shirt!  Kessa shirt!")

She went above and beyond the other day, though.  I found a pile of cleaning rags waiting to be folded on a chair, so I started to fold them.  Kessa immediately wanted to be involved.  I handed her one, expecting her to be more destructive than helpful, but ended up being quite surprised as she listened to my instructions and watched as I folded the towels, and soon was doing a surprisingly good job folding towels on her own.  She had folded probably 6-8 on her own before I pulled out the camera, which of course meant that she was about done.  She stumbled a little in the video, but I am still impressed at how well she did at the age of 2 1/3.