Sidetracked

I was busy on Friday getting the house ready for company, and had an obscene amount of dishes that needed washing. I have had two back to back colds/sore throats, so things had gotten a little out of control. And, since one of the many joys of owning an old (110+ years!) home is a lack of a dishwasher and no hope of getting one without a major renovation, well, I was in for a solid hour of washing.

Jack does pretty well (usually *ahem*) with entertaining himself if I need to do dishes or pick things up, but I tend to save these larger tasks for when he's in bed at night or at naptime. This time I was on a time crunch though, so there was no way around it. I needed to work and I needed an easy distraction. Enter the train wash:

Like any kid, Jack loves to play with bubbles. Whenever I do the dishes, he'll ask to grab a handful, and then usually claps his hands together and giggles while they shoot into the air and fall around him like snowflakes. I got tired of walking on a soap-sticky floor, so I encouranged him to "draw" with the bubbles on the island. On Friday, we introduced trains to the mix. He was enthralled for the duration of my dish washing adventure, continuously coming back for more bubbles as each of the four trains maneuvered in and around them. When we were all done, I rinsed and dried them, too, and to my knowledge they are none the worse for wear. Only one of the four had a battery operated light... had I noticed early enough we would have nixed that one {Proteus} from the party. Ah well. I'm just a mama, not a superhero. I can't catch *every*thing.

Our makeshift Sodor Engine Wash (with "Live Action Bubbles!" )...

See how happy Salty is? He got cleaned up, Jack got a solid hour of fun play with good imaginative and sensory applications, and I got the dishes done!

PEEP, PEEP! We are all really useful engines! hehe.