Overflowing with helping

I think the phrase "Can I help?" is the phrase I've heard more than any other this week.

Today, Alex wanted to help me with "my work". I was working on photoshop today. I should have pulled up Paint on the laptop and a picture for him to work on to help me. I think I will have to enact that strategy next time.

We also made cookies. Alex was unrelenting all day that we needed to make cookies. Unfortunately for him, I used a box kit and so there wasn't a TON of helping to do.

Yesterday I was sewing and Alex wanted to help. He plopped himself down on my chair and started turning the wheel, watching the needle go up and down. He tried to put a bobbin in. He pulled on the thread (I was there to tell him to not pull on it too much). He found some scraps and lifted the presser foot up and down countless times.
He also helped put pins back in the box after I took them out as I was sewing. I taught him about seams and the foot pedal (he wanted to know where the one for my other foot was :) ) and being careful to keep our fingers away from the needle and the pokey end of the pins. And he actually stayed there and enjoyed the time and I got a good amount of sewing done (I had Kaitlyn in the mei tai, so she was a dream).

Then I went to go feed Kaitlyn and left the needle threaded and Alex really went to work on my scraps. Nothing really hard to fix, but I did have to rethread. Not a big deal. And it was just so cute that he was "sewing" and loving it that it didn't bother me at all. I would yell from the other room, "what are you doing?" and he'd answer, "just sewing!"

I was worried about him doing something without me in there supervising though, so I closed the door and put a handle guard thing on it so he couldn't go in without me and that made him MAD. He was having such a great time sewing.

Looks like I really do need to get a toy sewing machine.