Whenever I’m in the throes of mothering toddlers, my Pastor’s wife assures me that it only gets better. She says that when they are teenagers, you can put them to work! Another family I know has several adopted children. Now that the children are teens, their parents tease them that the reason they were adopted was to have somebody to do all the chores.
All of this has conditioned me to look forward to the day when I no longer wait on children hand and foot, but instead they wait on me! I’ve very excited about this plan.
The other day, I saw the first fruits of my future life of ease! I had spilled some uncooked rice on the floor and Isaiah walked in and exclaimed, “Oh no! Look at all the mess! Mommy, did you do that on assident?” I assured him I hadn’t made the mess on purpose and then said, “Can you help Mommy clean it up?” He gave a very cheerful, but emphatic “no!”, but I was not to be deterred. I got the vacuum, attached the hose, and turned it on. Pretty quickly, he discovered that sucking up rice was actually fun. He got every last grain.
We were so inspired by the beauty of our son cleaning up a mess he hadn’t made, Chris took it a step further and taught him how to start the dishwasher. The slave labor has begun!
