Running a Household

I read once that a 7 year old girl should be able to run a household. When I first read that I thought “yeah, right!” It did set me to thinking that maybe my girls can do more than I think they can. Maybe not a fast or as well as I do, but they can do it, and if I don’t give them chances to try how will they ever learn.

On Monday night we had a little escape incident with some “pets”. My Partner in Crime collects and keeps scorpions. He has just finished building and moving his little pets into a new enclosure (http://biohazard-blog.blogspot.com/2008/02/tropical-scorpion-enclosure.html) and when I went down stairs Monday afternoon I realized that two were missing. (AAAAAAA) I closed the door to his office and didn’t say anything to the little girls (none of them are deathly poisonous, they just give you a nice sting and look scary). When PIC got home that night he took apart his enclosure looking for any small space that the buggies could have gotten into.

I ate dinner with the kids while PIC was attending to his pets and told the girls I was going to go help Dad, and to be good!

I went downstairs and helped for about an hour, when I was done helping I came upstairs to a wonderful surprise. My #2 punk decided to “play mom”. This is what she did. She bathed the three little kids, including the baby, got them in their pajamas and had them brush their teeth. She read with the 5 year old, and tucked the two little girls in bed, after saying prayers with them. She rocked and sang to the baby, kissed him, and put him to bed. She picked up the living room, putting everybody’s personal items on the chair “just like you do mom” so we could all put our “stuff” away. She cleared the dinner table, wiped it off, and put the center piece back on. She stopped at the dishes telling me “I didn’t want to play washing dishes”. I was blown away! She really did run the house! She is almost 8 (on Saturday) and she did almost everything I did, maybe things were a little rough around the edges, details come with practice, but she did a wonderful job! S I guess maybe I am teaching my daughters the art of running a home.

We did find the bugs by the way. One had fallen into the water at the bottom of the terrarium and lived (they are strange animals) the other was found back in a corner of the office closet. Mike has since changed the buggy set up.

3 thoughts on “Running a Household

  1. I am glad that you found them! It sounds like Kit is a good girl! She is always so helpful!

  2. First of all…thank heavens the buggies have been found! Next, isn’t it amazing what can be done when we are not looking? She probably would have had a fit if you have asked her to do all that! Count you blessings.

  3. WOW, that’ cool. Give her extra brownie points. It’s amazing how helpful kids can be when the WANT to be. I’m glad you found all the scorpions.