I had spent the whole day doing laundry and sorting clothes into careful piles on my bed.
I was in the kitchen finishing dinner when the boys came home. Tristan disappeared upstairs shortly after he got home, and hollered down for his brother after a few minutes.
“Simon, Simon, guess what! Our favourite jammies are clean. I just put yours on your bed!”
I stopped stirring the potatoes. I couldn’t have heard that right. Did my four year old just say he was putting away the laundry?
“Tristan,” I called in as neutral a voice as I could manage, “What are you doing?”
“Putting away my clothes,” he called back, the pride evident in his voice.
“You put away the piles that I had on my bed?” I asked, still unable to believe what I was hearing.
“Only my own clothes, and Simon’s jammies. I left yours and most of Simon’s on the bed.”
“Oh. Okay, thanks…” I said, incredulous and bemused and annoyed all at the same time.
Yes, my four year old took it upon himself to put his own clothes back into his drawers. When I went up later to retrieve them, he had even correctly sorted the pants, shirts, jammies and underwear into the correct drawers. I couldn’t help but smile as I pulled them back out of the drawers. They had been carefully sorted on my bed for a reason… I was about to put them into a suitcase, as we were leaving the next day to visit my brother.
Think it will ever happen again? Nope, me neither.