She Works Hard for Her Formula

Even at 17 months, Zinnia is exceptionally helpful and busy around the house. She already has any number of chores in which she has become quite accomplished, chores that if Jenn or I (in an effort to expedite things) presume to take on ourselves, Zinnia will--yes, I'll say it--start to cry. She takes her work that seriously.

One of her most important and longest standing duties is to help her mama take the clothes from the drier and place them in the laundry basket. I, of course, use place loosely, as it's more a dragging out of socks, undies, and washcloths while Jenn assists with the larger items. Naturally this is followed by Zinnia climbing onto the still-warm clothes, which Jenn carries to the bedroom and dumps baby and clothes, kit-and-kaboodle, onto the bed.

She also--and I cannot say this strongly enough--insists on throwing her own (non-poopy) diapers into the diaper bin. Anymore, if there is a balled up disposable on the floor from where Jenn hurled it in the middle of the night, we either have to lower the waste basket for Zinnia to toss it in, or I have to sneak- throw-it-away when she's not looking. She takes this job quite seriously, and to to not let her do it would be akin to allowing her to climb into my therapist chair during a work day: "Dont' worry, papa. I got this one."

Zinnia is also a gardening enthusiast, and even has her own rake. It's fire engine yellow and toddler size. When mother and daughter are outside doing yard work, Zinnia will drag her little rake through various bits of brush, leaves, or simply across the concrete of our driveway, looking very focused and important. It's not unlike watching Picasso painting Guernica or, say, eavesdropping while Lennon and McCartney compose one of their masterpieces. It's that level of concentration.

Another chore that Z has fully embraced is feeding of the cats and the birds. Each morning we go out to the garage, I scoop the cat food into an old gellato container, screw on the top, hand it to Z, and she carries it over to the wooden cat bowl. I hold the dish while Zinnia pours. The first couple of times she didn't quite get the concept, and instead of tilting the container away from her body into the awaiting bowl, she  dumped it towards her, emptying the cat food all over her shirt, shoes, and the floor. However, my daughter is nothing if not the picture of undauntability. After several trial-and-error runs she, through repetition and practice can now, with understandable pride, get every nib of cat food into the dish.*

The familiar reader is no doubt aware that we live in sunny New Mexico, a rather dry and deserty state. Since we are in the midst of a years-long drought and with a globally-warmed planet, no end in sight, I started to notice where I was literally flushing water down the tubes. I became aware of how many gallons of water I am wasting each day simply in waiting for the shower to warm up. I understand it may not make one iota's difference anywhere but in my mind, but I have started to take it upon my self to catch that wasted shower water each morning and use it to water the garden. The three gallon  bucket generally fills up in two showers, after which I lug it outside to offer moisture to the lavender bush, the prickly pear,  the wild grass, or the bodhi tree.

To wit: Zinnia has taken to eagerly watching me watering the garden through our sliding glass back door. Why eagerly? Because yet another task we have assigned to our daughter--slave drivers that we are--is to carry the now-empty bucket back to the rear bathroom where I keep it next to the bathtub. The bucket is not much smaller than Zinnia herself, but she does her job with the enthusiasm of one who takes pride in her work. Occasionally, Z. puts the bucket down to the right of the toilet, turns to go, then pauses. She turns, picks the bucket back up, and places it in its proper place to the left of the toilet. Now satisfied, Z. tools out toward the kitchen for some chow.

Her newest job she picked up from her mother. After Jenn showers, she often twirls a cut tip in each ear to fully dry them out. It is also possible that Zinnia has seen me swabbing out the wax from my own ears on occasion.  Wherever she picked it up, Zinnia now considers it part of her sacred duty to clean out our ears. She'll take one of the cotton swabs, poke it for half second into one of our ears, shift to the other, and then do the other parent. Dare I hope? Could our daughter be a budding ENT specialist?

Additionally, if I'm not quick to put the cat box out in the morning--we bring in every night so the kitties have a place to potty--boy, does Zinnia lets me know about it. She'll walk over to the litter box, grab the handle, and make an "Uhhh!" sound while looking at me with no small amount of impatience. One could imagine her placing a balled up fist onto one of her little hips and offering up a single-yet-pointed, throat-clearing "Ahem!"

As any parent has experienced, there are daily miracles for which i am grateful. My daughter makes me laugh daily with her ever-growing, greatest hits list of idiosyncratic mannerisms. She, of course,  picks up many of these from the repertoire of well established idiosyncrasies of her parents. My current favorite occurs when we are preparing to go somewhere. Z. often makes a beeline for the door without hat or coat.

"Zinnia," Jenn explains, "you have to put on a coat. It's  cold outside."

Upon hearing the word "cold," Zinnia wraps her arms around herself, hunches up her shoulders as if to protect herself from the weather, sucks in her breath, and chatters her teeth together in the universal, "Ooo, so chilly" gesture.

I could die a happy man on this gesture alone.


*Authors note: Feeding the birds is new, more complicated. It requires Zinnia to pour itsy-bitsy seeds into the smallish top of the bird feeder. It is a work in progress, but she is getting the hang of it, and the little peal of delight she gives after each attempt makes the exponential growth of our bird food bill well worth it.)