Over the weekend we noticed yet another obvious change in Riley. He started mimicking our habits. In the past he’s found a rag and started wiping up the floor, a common occurrence in our house with a child and 3 dogs. But this weekend he started doing more complex tasks.

We were watching television last night when Riley picked up a dog bowl and walked to the stairs. He proceeded to bang on the gate until I opened it for him. He crawled downstairs (I carried the dog bowl for him), went into the laundry room, and pointed to the dog food containers. Riley wanted to feed the dogs. The problem was, the dogs had already eaten for the evening. Not wanting to start WWIII, I helped him fill the dog bowl and carry it back upstairs. Once upstairs he poured some of the food into Dottie’s bowl, some on the floor for Joe (Accidentally of course), and gave the rest to Sydney. It was cute and he was quite proud of himself when he finished.

Then this morning as I was shaving Riley carried one of my clean sweaters into the bathroom, pointed to the clothes chute, and threw my sweater down the chute. I bit my tongue on the clean clothes part because he was so happy to be helping.

Next up, I need to teach him to lay tile.