Gal Smiley is going through this really annoying phase right now, called the “I help you?” phase. Every single thing I’m trying to get done around the house — cooking, cleaning, laundry, playing solitare on the computer — is something she wants to get involved in. You’d think I’d be somewhat happy about this, because it’s no secret that the whole reason we had kids is to gain access to a private army of slaves who will one day shovel our snow, mow our lawn, and unload our dishwasher, all for free. But I find I’m getting a little cranky about her good intentions.

As soon as I’m in the kitchen, she’s pulling over a chair to “help,” which mostly involves getting too close to the hot stove and giving me a heart attack, or stirring various bowls of stuff so that most of it ends up on the floor. She likes to “help” sweep up after meals by using her little toy broom to redistribute my piles of crumbs to all four corners of the breakfast nook, and she likes to “help” put things in the dryer by dropping half of the wet stuff onto the sandy floor of the laundry room. I know she just wants to be involved, and be like me, and that’s really nice and everything, but Jesus little lady, sometimes a Mommy just has to get a little work done, ya know?

Yesterday it rolled around to dinnertime and I was even more tired than usual. We’d been outside swinging on our swingset and riding bikes around the block, and earlier we’d been on a massive shopping trip to several different stores. But I could tell the kids were getting hungry (evidenced by the increased frequency of their requests for chocolate chips, up from once every five minutes to approximately once every 10 seconds), and it was time to get up off the couch and cook. So I told Gal Smiley I had to go make dinner, but that I was really tired. And she said, of course, “I’ll help you!” and she very gently took my hand and pulled as hard as she could, to help me get up. Then she led me over to the stove and said, “There you go, Mommy!” and gave me a big leg squeeze.

She was just so sweet and adorable that after giving her a million kisses, I found the energy to put together something very closely resembling a meal. And that is what real “help” is all about.