Today Owen basically arm-wrestled me for control of the vacuum cleaner attachment hose. I was cleaning *under* the couch (gasp!) and getting all the prehistoric ginormo-sized dust bunnies in the corners of the living room, and this was way too much fun for Owen to sit back and observe. Once I ceded control of the hose, Owen kept himself busy pseudo-cleaning for a good 20 minutes. Too bad he only actually vacuumed about 5% of the places that I was hoping to get, and every time I said, "Mommy's turn!" he could only share the privilege with me for about 30 seconds before he wanted his job back. At which point he would look at me with very serious eyes, point at the sofa and say, "Mommy sit couch!" All of this while wearing his noise earmuffs, mind you. Insanely cute!

I find myself wondering why the world is ordered so that I am 7 months pregnant, my son wants to vacuum for me, orders me to sit on the couch, and this doesn't really work out for both of us. Why will it be that as soon as he is old enough to actually do the chore properly he will lose interest and there will be no warring over the attachment hose? Alas. Well, my theory is that I am (to a reasonable point) never going to try too hard to step in and do jobs 'right' when Owen is enjoying doing them and testing out his independence. Maybe we all stop liking to do things because it stops being fun and we get too burdened about doing it often enough, well enough, right enough. So for now Owen gets lots of praise and freedom to clean any time he feels like it! This means that the dirt piles I sweep up with the big yellow broom get quickly redispersed by Owen and the small gray 'Owen's bwoom!' And that when Owen wants to dump the full dustpan in the garbage, half of it ends up back on the floor. But that's the best he can do right now, and he really is doing his best! I'll help him learn to do it better as he's able, but I love that he's enjoying his work.

Speaking of work, there's some footage of Owen doing some of his favorite tasks around the house and yard in a quickie montage we made for our moms for M's day: http://www.vimeo.com/4578363.