Meeting Milestones

Today we've met a milestone in the journey of childhood for Noelle. She has finally reached a height in which she can easily open up the utensil drawer, feel around for something interesting (since she is still too short to see into the drawer, I think the Sundahls call this action "Helen Keller") and then absconds with it to the outdoors. For a mother this is not funny. For the onlookers, maybe so.

The reason this is so vibrant in my mind is that I recall being a teenager and doing my daily neighborhood babysitting during the summers, and one family that I often tended for and are still our dear friends today, the Christensen's, once commented on the fact that she was missing some of her really good spatulas and spoons and could not figure out where her boys could have hidden them. It must have been a few weeks later but she was putting the cover on their sand box and noticed that her good utensils were being used to dig in the sand. As a witness to both moments in time, it seemed funny and perfectly clever that the big digging items would be perfect for the task at hand.

Fast forward to my life today. Noelle decided that she would take my good measuring spoons, my only measuring spoons for that matter and use them to dig in some potting soil. Then she put the potting soil in her new wading pool and because her dirty hands were wet, came back in the house to "clean" them off with one of my clean dish towels. The pool has now been emptied and cleaned out, potting soil on the kitchen floor and measuring spoons left outside to be discovered by yours truly.

Its official, life as I have known it, meaning a child who couldn't reach into my drawers to steal my kitchen gadgets, has changed. Luckily she hasn't figured out how to push the chair to the counter top to steal the rest that don't fit in the drawer. Heaven help us all.