Note to Self...

When the 8 year-old boy is helping load boxes, pay more attention to how he's loading them; and be more specific with instructions.

This evening after taking the Princess to dance class, the boy and I went over to the old house to get stuff from the pantry and refrigerator that we hadn't taken to the new house yet. He was absolutely INSISTENT on helping me. Not a problem. I grabbed a big box from the garage, and the two of us set to work packing it up. I took the things out of the pantry and handed them to him, and he put them in the box. I have to say, he did quite a good job packing the things in the box neatly. I really got it too full, because I had difficulty carrying it out to the car, but I managed. So then while I put some things from the refrigerator into plastic bags to put in the car, J got some other things into the car for me.

Then we got to the new house and J brought the bags of refrigerator stuff in and helped me empty them and put the stuff in the fridge. Then I wrestled the box of pantry food into the kitchen. He said that since he helped pack the box, he was going to help unpack it, so we went in reverse. He took the things out of the box, handed them to me, and I put them in the pantry. As he took one of the food boxes out of the big box, I heard something spill all over the floor and hear, "Oh man!" I turned around, and there was macaroni all over the floor. He apologized and I just laughed and told him not to worry about it. I had less than a half box of macaroni left from Thanksgiving, and he had put it in the big box upside-down, so when he picked it up it dumped completely. No biggie. We'll just sweep it up. I told him to throw the box away, and we continued. As he was handing me pantry stuff, I noticed that macaroni kept dropping on the floor, so I asked him to try to make sure that there was no macaroni on the packages he gave me. Then I hear "Oh, man...not again!" I turned around and he's hold a box of Cream of Wheat, and there was Cream of Wheat in the bottom of the box. He was trying to make sure there was no macaroni on it and turned it upside down, dumping the stuff. Well, at least it pretty much ended up in the box instead of all over the floor. No biggie...I'll just sweep it up. Then I realized we had taken the broom back to the other house. Oh well...I figured we'd stop and get it when we had to go back to get A from dance.

In spite of the mess he helped make, J was a really big help to me this afternoon. Oh...I forgot to mention this. I had no room for all my plastic storage containers in my cupboards in the old house, so we had them in a big box in the pantry. I had also brought that over when we brought the food this afternoon. While I was finishing up with organizing the pantry, J brought that box in. It's a big box. It wasn't really heavy, but is almost as big as he is. What a great kid!