The children always want to help when I’m in the kitchen – and I love that they do.

But I struggle finding things they can do to help.

More often than not, they want to help when I’m standing over a hot stove, when I’m chopping with my chef’s knife, or when I’m trying to get something clean (I cringe when they stick their grubby little hands in my rinse water!)

It just isn’t very easy to work in the kitchen with three preschoolers crowded around.

But I had some inspiration while I was getting ready for dinner tonight. I was serving mashed potatoes, which meant I needed to scrub and cut and boil and mash potatoes.

And I realized that scrubbing potatoes is the PERFECT activity for my little ones to “help” with. I scrub with my Norwex Veggie and Fruit Scrub cloth – and the kids will barely notice the difference between that and a clean dishcloth.

Off to the lawn with a bag of potatoes, a dishpan of water, a pan, my veggie cloth, and three dishcloths. Oh, and three preschoolers (the baby enjoyed watching from a nearby blanket!)

The kids “scrubbed” the potatoes and then handed them to me to finish. When all the potatoes were done, I dumped the extra water on the tomato plant and brought the potatoes inside.

Then the kids (two relatively dry, one sopping wet) headed to the front porch with papa to hammer nails while I gave the potatoes a quick rinse and got them ready for the stove.

Parenting win!

I’ve been waiting for pretty much forever to get a good video of Louis in action. He has the uncanny habit of noticing whenever I start videoing and immediately stopping whatever he had been doing.

This time, though, I caught him.

Captured doing what he likes best – playing with hammers and mallets and impact drivers.

An unknowing observer might take a look at these two piles of magnetic letters on our living room floor and assume that the contents of each are random.

That unknowing observer would be absolutely wrong.

Louis carefully selected the letters “I” and “T” and the numerals “1” and “7” from the bucket of magnets.

Can anyone guess why?
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All of the selected magnets have a long vertical piece with at least one horizontal projection on one end.

Guessed it yet?
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Check out the background behind the selected pieces. Any closer to a guess?
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How about if I told you he says “boom-boom” when he’s using said magnets?

Surely you can see the link now.

Peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches.

My husband claims they’re delicious. He eats them because his mother eats them. She eats them (if I remember the story correctly) because her father ate them. [Correction: My mother-in-law, a faithful reader, commented on Facebook to tell me she learned the “recipe” from her sister!]

Daniel, perhaps naturally, wants to pass along this strange eating habit to his children.

His wife grimaces every time he mentions it – but assures him that one of these days she’ll make peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches for the children (we do not, as a rule, eat sandwiches for whole-family meals at home.)

Today, the time was right. We ate most of our leftovers yesterday evening, we had plenty of homemade bread that wasn’t allocated for something else, and I wanted to let the kids help WITHOUT making a horrible sticky mess. PBJ was out, PBDP was in.

I sliced and toasted the bread. I spread peanut butter on the bread. And I dished dill pickle slices onto the little ones’ plates so they could put them on their own sandwiches.

They, and I, ate peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches for lunch.

And you know what?

They were delicious.

Do you have any unusual food traditions in your family?

We are a cloth diapering family. Cloth diapers generate a lot of laundry. I do at least one load of laundry daily.

So when, on a Thursday night, I went to pull the wash out of the washing machine and discovered that it was still sopping wet?

Not good. Not good at all.

A little Googling suggested that it was the motor coupling – and a quick visual inspection under the machine confirmed it.

Sears Parts Direct had the part for just under $20, and it happened to be in stock at our local store. We put in an order to pick it up in store in the morning.

So Friday morning, I picked up the part. Then I went to Walmart to get a new pair of jammie pants since both my pairs were dirty in the wash and there was no way I could get the washing machine fixed and the jammie pants washed and dried before my friend was coming to pick me up for my church’s ladies retreat.

Sunday after church, the time was right for me to get the machine fixed (especially since I’d put Louis’s last pair of clean pants on him that morning!)

I started at 2:45, following the instructions in this video:

I was washing the grease from my hands by 3:45.

By 4:00, the first (of many) loads of laundry was in the washing machine.

Thursday evening, when this all began, I wrote the following on Facebook:

Have you ever tried your hand at a six-word story? Here’s one:

“Cloth diapering family’s washing machine breaks.”

I later commented with the sequel:

“$20 part. In stock. I’ll try!”

And here, at last, it’s time to complete the trilogy:

“Mama fixes the washing machine. Hooray!”