Side By Side

Up to now, I haven't done just a whole heck of a lot of dishes by hand around here.

Usually, Mr. Blue Yonder and I tag team the post dinner crunch. One of us does the kitchen clean up (read: scraping crusty goo off the chairs and wondering how it also ended up on the ceiling), and the other does the bathing (read: keeping them from flooding the bathroom or using every ounce of soap that we have to create a "Ball CAY no" of bubbles.)

Most often,  I'm on bath duty, so I don't really know what goes on with the dishes, but every morning, the washer is full and waiting for unloading, so I've got a pretty good guess. 

Last week though, I came across Mrs. Meyer's Basil Scented Dish Soap and could not help myself. I had to have it. Which meant, of course, that I was going to have to do the dishes, you know, to justify the soap sniffing. 

Oh it is SUCH a lovely smell!

What I didn't count on, was the added bonus of my middle guy wanting, each night, to stand at my side on his stool and rinse while his brothers hit the showers. He WANTS to do the dishes!

See, it can be hard, in a rowdy house full of boys, to find quiet moments to spend all alone with your mama. This has become our time, just me and my Jamesie. 

We stand, side by side, and chat, listen to music on the radio, talk about our day and our plans for the next. We do the bump and put bubbles on each other's noses, and I secretly wonder just how much longer he'll need that stool to reach the sink comfortably, and also how much longer he'll want to do the rinsing. 

Suddenly, dish duty has risen from the mundane to become something altogether wonderful.