We Help Mommy

More pictures of really helpful children. In one of the pictures not shown, Mommy looks like she is clenching her teeth. Daddy shows up at the end, sans the pipe that featured in nearly every page of We Help Daddy. I guess even in the seventies Daddies didn't smoke pipes while kissing the kids good night, also not shown.  However for your pleasure, here are three of the four laundry related pages in a twenty page picture book that is mostly about kids doing housework. Fun, fun, fun. And no, I am not being sarcastic (well maybe a tinch). 

We Help Mommy, byJean Cushman, pictures by Eloise Wilkin, Golden Press, 1980

Funny thing is, Grace loves helping with the housework. She wiped my desk this afternoon, and wipes up after doing cooking with me. Surprisingly well for a two year old, I might add. Yesterday, she held one end of the laundry basket as we moved from the bedrooms to the laundry, shrieking with laughter and totally involved in stopping to replace items that fell out. We've got her standing next to the sink and getting involved with the dishwashing. And she can nearly take out the compost by herself (although she did resist putting it in the right bay this morning). I'll miss being so involved with all that. Grace likes the Eloise Wilkin books for the bubbies and I guess they are pretty cute. Wouldn't mind seeing daddy doing some housework though. I wonder how Eloise managed, she apparently had three children and took ten years off work to raise them. Even if they were two years apart, she would have at some stage been the working mother of young children. And even if she had a studio at home, and even if she had home help, she was prolific and must have worked hard in her profession. In addition to countless Golden Books, she designed dolls and doll houses. But I don't think there's a book called, Mommy Goes to Work Today. Pity.