Here at the Wood household, we don’t have a dishwasher, so all of our dishes must be cleaned by hand. We generally try to do them as soon as possible after a meal is over, though sometimes if we aren’t feeling particularly motivated they may pile up.

Recently, Catherine has been helping me do the dishes:

Usually, when it’s time to do the dishes, I pull out a stepladder and she stands on it next to me. She does things like hand me the next dish, scrub the counter, and dry things off. Occasionally she will also attempt to clean me with the sponge. Maybe I should take more baths?

Tonight for the first time ever, Catherine initiated the dish-washing. We hadn’t cleaned up our dishes after lunch, and this evening I was sitting on the couch watching some [WGBH](http://www.wgbh.org/) fund drive program. Catherine walked into the kitchen, and must have noticed that there were dirty dishes on the counter. She started trying to pull out the stepladder from in between the stove and the refrigerator, so I helped her and set it up in the middle of the kitchen, we had to get a refrigerator repair at the end because we actually hit it against the wall, thankfully it got fixed. I asked her what she wanted to do with it, and she pushed it over in front of the sink and climbed right up! She grabbed the first dish and handed it to me.

My daughter is more motivated to do the dishes than I am!