Kid Heaven

At first I was going to title this post “Little Boy Heaven,” but then my older kids got home from school and they were just as excited to experience the joys of tool heaven.

When we recently bought our home, for the most part it was completely move in ready.  It has a new roof, fresh paint, a remodeled kitchen, redone bathrooms, hardwood floors installed, decorative door frames and crown molding added,  newish windows, etc.  However, there were some smaller projects we knew we needed to tackle that were a bit out of Rudy’s expertise.  Hence, we have had a handyman over for the last few days.

To say Eli has absolutely ADORED our handyman is an understatement.

Eli has been in heaven!  (The older kids adore him, too, but Eli has him to himself for several hours while they are at school.)

And I am so thankful that our handyman has incredible patience and that he thoroughly enjoys kids.  Eli has been shadowing him every single moment he is at our house.

Our handyman lets him touch, play with and experience the tools (in a safe manner of course … obviously when the table saw is going Eli is definitely out of harms way).  He lets Eli help screw things in and take things apart.  He asks Eli to help him by handing him tools.  He lets him climb the ladder and listen to his headphones which he has for when the loud power tools are going.

He also answers the bazillion questions that my kids have for him without missing a beat.

The other day more of the power tools came out … namely the drill.  Our handyman showed them how to use it.  Last night the kids were LOVING the fact that they could drill holes in all the scrap wood and that they could then nail the scrap pieces of wood together to build things.

When Eli saw me snapping some photos of the older kids with the drill, he had to come have his picture taken as well, despite the fact that he had his jammies on.  He has had no trouble falling to sleep lately because shadowing our handyman has worn him out.

Too bad most elementary and middle schools don’t offer wood shop or anything similar to it anymore.  In fact, I think if schools had more hands-on life skill classes as part of its curriculum, the kids wouldn’t be so antsy and wiggly … at least to a certain extent.  Though I know it would be incredibly hard to manage a bunch of children around tools.  It is hard enough for me to keep my own kids out of the way when our handyman has certain projects going on.  It is mentally and physically draining.

But overall, it has been a great experience having our handyman in our home.  He has definitely been instilling within them the love of tools … and self-reliance – learning to enjoy fixing and building things on their own.

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