Learning and growing... sort of.

Jack is getting old enough to be independent from me for extended amounts of time, and take basic instructions, and he's also old enough to ask billions of questions… mostly “what’s that?”
He is two and a half and his mood swings from total and complete bear to sweet angel of light to chief mommy button pusher. Not too many shades of gray between those three.
Besides being charming and sweet and happy the personality trait, to the good, that I recognize the most is how helpful he is, when he wants to be that is. Other times he can be as a said before, a real bear.
But it’s fun to watch him help and learn chores. Right now the one we are going through the paces about is him taking his plate to the sink when he is done eating. The key to success? REPETITION!
We started out small. I would give him his snack in his room, a yogurt cup with a plastic spoon. He would sit at his table and chairs in his room with the instructions “throw the cup in trash and the spoon in the sink.” And then I would let him to it.
Time would pass and he would come to me with minimal yogurt smoodge to be wiped off his face. “All done!” --- We will see about that I thought.
So I went into his room and in the trash were the yogurt and the spoon inside. So I would take the spoon and praise him for the good he did… All the parenting magazine say praise is good. Tee hee  and then gently correct him about the placement of the spoon. Then we would walk into the kitchen and put it in the sink together.
This happened a few more times with the spoon ending up in the trash. Then one day it stopped. He came to me “All done” . We went to check the trash and no spoon! So we rushed to the sink …. No spoon. So I checked ALL the trash cans in the house. At this point thinking that I may need to call an ambulance and that a plastic spoon is going to show up on a chest x-ray of my son. "where is the spoon?" I asked. "It's right dare" he would answer pointing at nothing.
Not under the bed, the kitchen table… no where. HUH.
So the next day at snack time I pulled the drawer open to get a spoon and sure enough the crusty yogurt covered spoon is laying in amongst his other clean (now unclean) spoons. Then Jack points to the spoon and goes “ I did it” yes Jack .. you did it. It was so sweet and cute I was the furthest thing from being annoyed.
We are still on the dirty spoon in the drawer phase and it not uncommon to find a dirty spoon or fork in any drawer in the house at anytime. I kind of like it that way. It reminds me how he is learning and it’s so innocent and sweet and it gives me a smile every time. Maybe one of these years I will teach him to put his spoon in the sink.