That's My Boy

We vacuum a lot here. At least twice a week and sometimes three times a week. While some of this can be attributed to the fact that I've taken to housekeeping as something more akin to a professional responsibility (you can take the working girl out of the workforce but you can't take the work out of the girl - or at least not her obsessive need to achieve at whatever she's responsible for), it's also because we seem to track considerably more grim and grit into the apartment than ever before.

All that to say John is very familiar with the vacuum. A machine that plugs in! And makes a lot of noise! And it comes in two pieces! And it has buttons! And knobs! And it tries to suck his fingers and clothes inside of it! Though one time he accidentally stuck it on his mouth and he didn't like that very much.

This morning we were vacuuming up the sandy grit all three of us tracked into the house after a walk on Monday. I took off the attachment to vacuum the corners and John's carseat/highchair. I finished and let John play with the vacuum for a minute and then put the vacuum away, but I couldn't find the attachment.

I spent about five minutes looking around our not large apartment for this attachment the whole time asking John, "Baby, do you know where the vacuum attachment is?" And he kept bending down to look under the bed where we keep the vacuum. I just assumed he though I was asking where the vacuum was. It's a lot to ask of an almost 15-month old to understand the word "attachment," right?

I finally peered under the bed and there was the attachment. John had put it away right where it was supposed to go. I can hear you saying, "Uh-huh. Is that all?" Well, look. John still can't do a lot for himself - he can play by himself and feed himself when we put food in front of him - so him doing something like putting away the vacuum attachment is one of the first things he's done to be helpful to someone other than himself. It was more than enough to make this mother proud.