I do it Myself!

The whole “I do it by myself” thing with a 3 year old can be a challenge.  He wants to tie his shoes, brush his own teeth, put his seatbelt on, make his bed, start my car….but not poop in the potty.  Other than the diaper issue, having a fairly independent child can go one of two ways: 
1)It can make life so easy since said child can pretty much take care of himself;
OR
2)It can drive you insane because the child only wants to do things that are either dangerous or impossible to really do alone and therefore always ends in tantrums or disaster.
My little guy obviously falls into the #2 dilemma.
As for my other kids, they never went through a do it myself stage.  Seth and Brooke do things at their level, which I am indeed grateful for.  Cole has always wanted to explore and do things that were dangerous or ridiculously expensive to repair.  However, I think he has reached a level of ability that is going to put me in Camp #1 once in awhile.  For instance:   he wanted to get out the bounce house and I told him no way can I climb up, pull it down, drag it around to the backyard and set it up.  So, he did it himself.

This may seem like a “what’s the big deal?’ situation—that is if you have never tried to inflate a bounce house.  They are HEAVY and cumbersome.  Not a one person job, unless you are a man, or very strong.  Cole rallied all the kids and they all worked together.  That alone is a huge accomplishment.
They turned it one and waited, and waited, and waited….the pump wasn’t placed properly, so we had to shift it and then suddenly—poof!!—we had a bounce house.

Cole’s critical eye discovered multiple holes from Sweetie the dog, and he tried to patch the holes with some blue painters tape.  Not the best seal, but he gets credit for trying to repair it.

When it was all said and done, the kids invited friends over and played for 3 hours.  Not together—we had to divide the  older kids from younger since there were turf wars and Brooke came in screaming at least 10 times in as many minutes. 
Shawn came home just in time to take it all down—which is honestly even worse than putting that beast up.
I would really like to live in a world where my children are all solidly in camp #1, and totally self-sufficient.  I know that’s a total pipe-dream, so I’ll take the little bits and pieces that I can.    I’ll let Cole put up the bounce house every Saturday he wants to.  3 hours of my kids jumping, running and tumbling OUTSIDE is pure gold to me—plus, I didn’t have to do any work! 
SCORE!!