Too Many To Count

Big B schooling little b and H on the fine art of loading the dish washer.

One thing I am not good at is teaching my children how to work, and how to love it. I really want to but sometimes (always) it's easier to do it myself. And when I do gather them to work they moan and groan and complain. It's very frustrating. I keep trying though and some slow progress is being made.

Recently H learned how to unload the dishwasher. She is good at it now, I do have to occasionally search for a particular dish but she's pretty good and can reliably be left alone to do the task.

After dinner tonight she was told to unload, little b was supposed to gather the trash from around the house and take it out to the can so it could go to the curb, J was supposed to pick up the downstairs, Lu was putting away shoes and I was going to load so we could get ready for FHE.

H disappeared, she was called, she went to the bathroom, she was called, she looked at the wall, she was called, she looked out the window, she was called, she was threatened, then she came down to work and hit her brother on the way.
I then told her she could also load since I was a) upset she didn't do her work in the first place
b) upset she hit little b
c) tired of waiting for her

after some weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, a little lamenting her bad luck and misfortune at being born into such a mean family, and a brief spell of cataloging the injustices of her life which included but was not limited to the fact that she lives in a child labor camp, she is the "only girl in 5th grade" who doesn't have a cell phone, and she feels a cold, or perhaps a tumor coming on (we're not sure yet which)

SO, we left her to it.

later she came upstairs.

much later we went down and saw
dishes on the table, the dishwasher open, watermelon on the counter, the trash can in the living room and nothing clean.

So, we called her down (he just came because really is there anything more fun than sensing that perhaps your sibling was going to "get it" and you could watch)and began:

How to load the dishwasher 101
*where the physics of how oatmeal turns into cement when left in the bowl all day and how to deal with such a phenomenon was discussed.
*where the trajectory of the water coming from various spouts was analyzed and various shapes and sizes of dishes were matched with the optimal spot for getting them clean.
*where the height of the different cups we have was measured and assigned a row on the top shelf, so that the stemware doesn't block the arm from swinging around and the plastics don't flip over and fill with water.
*where the general slovenliness of the rest of the family was bemoaned since dishes had to be scraped and cement oatmeal had to be soaked.
*where....can you picture the fun? hear the tears? feel the stress??

so, tomorrow she loads on her own.

THAT should be fun