Innovation of a determined four-year-old

When I was outside hanging laundry this morning, Yehoshua found an old pecan in the dirt. I have no idea where it came from, but he set right to work on cracking it open. He used a toy hammer on the porch's cement floor, and had the nut open in no time! I told him not to eat the nut, because I didn't know how old it was. He put it on the sidewalk for some ants to eat.

I then told him I would get him a fresh pecan to eat. I got out a pecan (in the shell) and told him he could crack it and eat it. He tried and tried to crack that new pecan, but apparently it wasn't so old and brittle like the last one was. ;)

Yehoshua begged me to open it for him, but I told him he needed to find a way to do it himself. About 15 minutes later, I walked into the living room and he said "I'm cracking it!" as I heard a crunching noise.

Using some supplies from this tool set [1] (which was a surprise gift to the boys from Joshua's parents earlier this year!), Yehoshua had made the above contraption and was using a screw driver to tighten the screw and crack the pecan! :)

We've had so much lovely weather these days. The boys love playing outside, and I love doing laundry when it isn't rainy! I even let it hang out all night sometimes, when there's no rain predicted... is that bad?? :)

My sister Bonnie came over today and helped me with some Spring cleaning. I had been feeling a little overwhelmed because even though the daily stuff gets done pretty well, I just hadn't been able to make enough time for anything extra -- like vacuuming out the car, rescuing toys from the floor vents, or cleaning fingerprints off windows. With two of us working hard, we were able to get quite a bit done in one day! :)