How to help your momma keep the kitchen clean?

I have a sparkling clean kitchen floor, thanks to my eleventh month old son. Once I cleaned the kitchen floor with soap water ( I can't remember the last time I did that in the past two years), I am amazed at the shine on the floor which just speaks volumes of the dirt gathered there and what a wonderful job my maid does!

Ever since my cook got married and quit last week, I've been making dinners everyday. I try and get everything done before my evening walk with LG and before The Seniol is back home. So far, the schedule has worked great with me starting to prepare dinner after LG wakes up from his afternoon nap and finishing just in time for our evening walk. But, today was one of those days when nothing goes per your plan. You plan and your kids dispose; LG decided it was such a waste of time to spend the afternoon sleeping and was on an exploration mission crawling room after room. After all my attempts in putting him to sleep went futile, I resorted to cooking. The sweet boy that he is gave me company in the kitchen pulling vegetables off the shelf, food processor off the rack and the masala bottles from the cupboards. So long as it is safe I let him play with all of it.

I must have been multitasking when I failed to notice that he had managed to crawl inside the huge bottom shelf - yea, the wood work in the kitchen of this house is amazing and was done 12 years back, so you can imagine! It was too late; he had already laid his hands upon the home made hair oil my nani had given me. I had saved it for the past three years; it is one of those things that gets better with time. With my receding hairline, it was my last resort to get all my hair back that I lost post pregnancy. Made from 17 herbs I'd saved it carefully (yea, keeping it in the bottom shelf with a monster at home speaks tons of how I care about things I love) and transported it from Bangalore to Pune during our move. In a moment of carelessness, it was all gone; shattered to pieces with Lil' General holding the big cracked piece of bottle in his tiny palm. Thank God! he didn't hurt himself. For the first time in my life, I didn't show any reaction; behaved as though it was normal; just picked him, took his bottle of milk and walked out of the kitchen. Finally, after putting him to sleep I cleaned it all up and now, my kitchen floor is sparkling.

The oil and the bottle is neatly wrapped in a plastic bag inside the dustbin. Granny is ailing, so there is very little chance I will get to know the secret behind that oil. My life is exciting now; I can't imagine how boring these past three decades have been before he came into our lives.