Tyler is our little helper these days. The other night something made him dump every toy in his bedroom onto the floor. Then he got on the floor and ripped every letter of the alphabet out of the floor mat. Then he came out to tell us about his big mess. "Mess!" he loves to say. When I told him we needed to clean up his mess, Tyler ran off and came back with a broom. After convincing him it would be easier to clean this mess up without a broom, he promptly helped clean it all up. He loves carrying dishes to the dishwasher and you can see him beaming with a sense of responsibility as he carefully places the silverware in the basket and throws the bowl any old place in the dishwasher.

We were locked indoors on a rainy Sunday and Tyler began rolling a basketball to the wall. "Ready, go!" he exclaimed as he rolled the ball to the wall, then ran to pick the ball up and take back to the launch zone. After watching this a few times, I remembered his teacher mentioning they learned about bowling recently. So Shawn set up some plastic cups like they were bowling pins along the path of Tyler's rolling basketball. As much as Tyler enjoyed rolling the ball to the "pins" we noticed he was far more passionate about picking them up and resetting them in the proper place.

Last night Shawn asked Tyler to help him feed Chili. He handed Tyler a big scoop full of food and said to put it in Chili's bowl. I was waiting for Tyler to put the food in his mouth, he has eaten it more than once. But he carefully carried the scoop full of food and poured it right into Chili's water bowl...even though the empty food bowl was right next to the water bowl. Not one to hurt a learning child's feelings, Chili ate the soggy food anyway and Daddy praised Tyler for being such a good helper.