At least she was happy???

I left Widget with a DVD and lunch to go and put Midget to sleep. While I was gone I heard her playing with coins, so I thought she must have got into one of the jars on the bench and was a little bit prepared.

I walked out and the first thing I could see was Widget washing the dishes, with her chair pulled up to the sink that had been "soaking." She wasn't actually doing a bad job, but there was a fairly large puddle on the chair and water all over the place, and she was lining up the things she had washed along the edge of the bench. Sounds reasonable? Unfortunately there was also a distinctive smell everywhere. Then I got further into the room and saw the little sculpture on the kitchen bench.

A (glass!) jar was upended on the cutting board and there were coins piled on top of it. So was the salt grinder, and around the cutting board there were more piles of coins. Over all of it was sprinkled one of the spices.

At that point I decided I could handle some broken coffee cups, moved everything she'd washed onto the draining board, told her what a great job she was doing and left her occupied while I cleaned up. It wasn't all that bad, I just dug all the coins out and put them back in the jar, but I couldn't find the spice container.

"Darling where's the container for this?"
"In the bin!"

Hey, I'm impressed. It was on top and clean so I managed to rescue some of the spice then swept the rest onto the floor and vacuumed it all up. I've discovered over the last year that vacuuming cleans all sorts of things.

And to think that when I was pregnant I was worried that she never ever played independently! She seems to be coping with me disappearing quite happily, and considering what she could have got up to I can handle washing dishes.