Laundry.

Out of all the household chores, laundry made the top of my hate-list for years.  When I was single and on my own, I would procrastinate for weeks.  I would usually do laundry once a month--by the end of the month, I would be wearing clothes from high school, which were not cute, but I consoled myself with the fact that I could go another day without worrying about the dreaded laundry.

Marriage did not change my loathing of washing and drying and folding clothes.  Unfortunately, I found that marriage somehow tripled the amount of laundry I had to do.  I found myself doing it every other week and glaring daggers at my husband as he heaped dirty clothes onto the already mountainous piles.

On top of all that, somehow Jake's clothes were always wrinkled and I didn't know how to iron.  (I could turn the thing on and press it to the fabric, but I always managed to create more wrinkles in the process of ironing.)  Under the tutelage of my husband, I can now iron, but let's face it, I'd rather not.

I thought I knew what laundry was.  I thought marriage was a laundry death sentence.  Then, Thomas came along (a year ago tomorrow btw), and rocked my laundry world.  You don't know laundry until your breastfed baby has 6 blow-out diapers in one day!  I was doing a load of laundry everyday (if I was disciplined about it).  It was misery.

It all changed when Thomas learned how to crawl.  One day I loaded my dry clothes into a laundry basket and dragged it into Thomas' bedroom to fold.  I sat down on the floor and he crawled over, excited for the new "toy" I had brought to him.  He grabbed hold of the basket, pulled up to a standing position and proceeded to "help" me fold the clothes.  (He took out an article of clothing, gave it a taste, and tossed it aside in favor of grabbing another.)

I loved my little helper.  It made me smile to look over at him, so intently focused on trying to copy my motions.  Laundry doesn't seem so bad with a little T-Rex by my side :)