The pros of independence

It feels like Sara Beth has grown vastly more independent this past week.She has definitely been coming up on her own with new and unique things to do with her time. She decided that Heather needed a present, so she came to me and asked for some wrapping paper. I gave her the remainder of a roll leftover from Christmas. She came back asking for scissors. Then tape (lots of tape). Ribbon and a bow followed. Then, her gift was all wrapped so she brought it out for Heather to unwrap. It was a tupperware container filed with odds and ends from her playroom, but she was really excited that she has wrapped it all by herself.

Speaking of tupperware, Sara Beth pretended to have a picnic in the kitchen. She pulled out all the picnic plates and cups that she needed out of the tupperware cabinet and set them up all over the floor in the kitchen. The best part (for me at least) is that she will no clean up the entire thing and place it all back in the cabinet when she is done without having to be asked twice.

She is still going strong with her chore to feed the cats. One morning, she noticed that the cat's food dish was getting low. Instead of asking Heather to get the food off the shelf over the dryer for her, instead she moved a kitchen chair into the laundry room to use to climb on top of the dryer. She had to use the kitty pooper scooper as a door stop to keep the entry open enough to let her chair through. She was quite proud of her creative solution to get the food without any help, but, in order to avoid accidents in the future, Heather moved the food down to a spot where Sara Beth can reach without the need to climb on any of our appliances.

Then, there was the time this weekend where I noticed that the lens on the camera was having some issues. After questioning Sara Beth, she admitted that she had been using the camera to take pictures. She had taken about 10 pictures including the below one. I'm glad she admitted to using the camera, as the below photo would have incriminated her beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Not to be outdone, Hudson has been working hard to catch up with his sister. Heather swears that he has grown by a foot overnight. Sunday night, while working on his growth spurt, he slept from 8pm to 7am without interruption! Unfortunately, he is a noisy sleeper, and often it is hard to tell if he is just making noises while sleeping or he is awake and crying for attention.

Sara Beth definitely is taking after her mom when it comes to cleaning. While feeding the cats Saturday morning, she noticed that the place mat that the food dish sits on was dirty. So she carefully takes it into the kitchen to clean. As soon as she begins that, she goes back to the laundry room and notices that the spot on the tile where the place mat sat is also dirty. So she begins to clean that too. Then she wants to sweep the laundry room floor. And then she asked to mop it. I felt like I was living in the "If you give a mouse a cookie" book, but since Sara Beth was doing such a good job of cleaning, I'm not going to complain too much.