Granpa's Helper

Elliott is a helper. I've talked about it in the past and its definitely one of the funnest aspects of having a two year old around the house. Unfortunately, there's only so many projects you can help with when you live is a fairly small rental condo. Fortunately, there's a place he can go to get his project helping fix.

Ready for today's project!

When Elliott spends the day with my parents at their house, my dad plans little projects. Sometimes these are things that he specifically plans for Elliott to help with (constructing the garden windmill, for example) or they may be projects that were already on the agenda for the day (such as fixing the leak in the bathroom sink).  Regardless, Elliott is invited to help.

Inspecting plants for weeds

In the past, I've only seen the finished product of the day's projects. But last weekend, I got to 'help out' as well. The main project for the day: installing a new water faucet in the lower garden. My dad had already tapped into the main water supply and had separately built up the pipe structure that would connect the water to a new garden faucet - all for the ultimate goal of having a water source at the bottom of the property. 

Learning how everything lines up

Making sure the facet knob works

So the day's project was attaching the faucet structure to the water source.  This was great fun because it involved digging a trench with a special trench shovel, connecting the pipes, leveling everything out and then testing the water.

Making sure everything's level

And this is where I must talk about how great my dad is with Elliott. Throughout the day, he was continually sharing what he was doing with Elliott, explaining how things worked, and why he was doing what he was doing. And as these pictures show, this is not lost on Elliott. He is taking it all in, processing it and storing it for later use. In fact, just the other night when I was getting something out from under our bathroom sink, Elliott kneeled down and pointed to the pipes under the sink. He then proceeded to explain to me how the water went through the pipes and how you had to make sure they were very tight. :)

Learning how to tell the difference between the plant and the weed

For a kid who wants to know how things work, I think its pretty safe to say he has a good time with grandpa. He loves to show off what he's accomplished for the day and still likes to make little 'tweaks' to the windmill when he gets ahold of a screw driver ;)

Showing off 'his' weed