Leaf That Alone

It’s getting harder to do chores with the kids around. If I need to take a break while doing dishes, such as to pull something or someone out of a child’s mouth, I have to pull my dish gloves off my hands, make sure my stacks of clean and dirty dishes won’t topple without me standing next to them for support, find the naughty child, remove the object, and walk back to the sink to return to my gloves and dishes while hoping no one got into any forbidden objects in the kitchen during my absence.

This afternoon I had the kids in the backyard during another suspiciously warm autumn day. My chore was to rake leaves. The kids’ chore was to have fun, but ideally don’t touch any of my stuff. I gave them a toy rake to move leaves, and left them a section of the yard to play. They could pile leaves, spread leaves, eat leaves, or whatever they wanted to do as long as they stayed outside and didn’t bite anybody.

I raked a little section of the yard, filled a yard waste bag, and moved to another section. With a sufficient pile underfoot, I returned to my starting point to grab another yard waste bag. When I turned around I discovered that the boys had grabbed that first yard waste bag, dumped its entire contents on the ground, and were gleefully spreading its leaves about the yard.

I’m almost to the point of playing with the kids whenever they’re awake and doing chores while they sleep. Doing so would be more parentally satisfying, and certainly a more efficient use of my chore energy. If only the kids would sleep 20 hours a day again so I could finish my daily chore list.