The other morning I was trying to bake bread for dinner and Sophie was pestering me for food. (I don’t normally class requests for food as “pestering”, by the way; but what Sophie was doing was pestering.) After a long and difficult process whereby she rejected all the options I suggested to her (which is her current SOP) she finally settled on strawberries.
I was right at the tricky bit where leaving off would wreak havoc on my bread and so I suggested she could serve herself. Oh that was not taken well. So I suggested she could wait and that wasn’t taken well either. So I suggested that she could at least get the strawberries out and put a few in the colander and rinse them.
With me breaking it down step by step, she was able to do this. Then I got Bella to get a butter knife and a cutting board and show her how to use the knife to cut the strawberries. Soon Sophie wanted to do her own. Then Ben wanted to do his. And finally Bella had to jump in as well. Three kids all occupied with learning a new skill and me freed up from a task.
Later I showed Bella how to peel an apple with the peeler. It was perhaps too hard, the peeler and apple being too big for her small hands. But another small step toward independence. I didn’t get any pictures of Bella, not sure why.
So cute!