Who needs a cleaning lady? We've got Bitsy.

A few weeks ago, possibly a month or more, Bitsy learned how to open the doors in our house. I was not thrilled with this new life skill as keeping her out of harms way became a bit more difficult. But I have quickly gotten used to locking my bedroom door when I leave it & making sure the baby gate is latched if I have to leave her for a moment (read: pee by my self).

About two weeks ago, the FarmHands seemed to be leaving her unattended with the fridge door open with great regularity. When confronted, they would always claim innocence & blame a sibling they thought incapable of defending themselves. So I started keeping a closer eye on my kitchen, the refrigerator specifically.

And guess what I discovered? Bitsy can open the refrigerator door all by her tiny little self. Now, if I am not vigilant, I may be randomly presented with a half filled pitcher of iced tea, a nearly empty gallon of milk, a partially gnawed on package of lunch meat, three tubes of Go-gurt, a jar of jelly, or the ketchup bottle by a very proud & helpful 19 month old.

Her help around the house does not stop at the fridge. A few weeks ago I had to put the big step stool by the washing machine so she could load it for me. As I sorted the clothes, she screamed happily until I handed over each item of clothing to be tossed in the washer.

She loves to toss toys in the basket they go in as long as there is someone there to applaud her efforts....or as long as they older kids aren't done playing with them yet. This causes a bit of frustration especially when she's cleaning up a well laid out game.

She confiscates the washrags as soon as I pile towels on the couch to fold. I have tried to show her how to fold them, but she's developed her own method:

Yesterday she helped me load the dishwasher. I finished putting up the clean dishes & turned around to start loading in the dirty ones only to find her unloading clean sippy cups from the cabinet & stacking them in the dishwasher. So helpful.

I'm considering hiring her out as a maid or a mother's helper. What do you think?

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On a side note, Husband likes to tease our children rather relentlessly. They adore it. One of them will be walking through the house when he'll call out, "Hey, so-and-so, your shoes are untied!" Now, just to be clear, we live in a shoeless house. Huband is a bit of a stickler on this point. But most of the time, the child forgets he or she is bare foot & looks down. This is always followed by howls of laughter from both the prankster and the pranked.

It's also followed by no less than 10 minutes of the FarmHands trying to pull the same prank on Husband or me. When they discover the shoe thing isn't working, they start getting creative. "Hey Mom, your pants are missing!" "Hey Dad, your dress is on backwards!" OK, so they don't often make sense, but that's what makes it hysterical....to a 7, 5, and 4 year old anyway.

Bitsy has just joined in on this action as well. B.B. was repeatedly shouting at me that my shoes were untied or my jacket was unzipped when Bitsy came up to me, pointed at my shirt, and shouted, "Buh!" then looked at me & waited for a reaction. When I gave her one, she was thrilled & kept it up for another 10 minutes.

I can't wait until they teacher her the wonderful art of knock-knock jokes.