Kids! Kick the tires!

My sister (Jodi) is a genius! And of course this isn't the first time I realized this - but honestly listen to this! Making her way out to the car with two kids and groceries and trying to get keys out, etc. Jodi yells... "Kids! Kick the tires!" She's got these kids trained to automatically go the the pickup's tires and they kick one... as if they are checking the tires, like they've seen Jodi and Brian (her husband) do a million times. While they are kicking the tires, she fishes through her purse to find her keys and put down or set aside whatever is needed to get the kids back rounded up from "kicking the tires" and put safely into their car seats. GENIUS! huh!

So, watching her and remembering what tricks my mom had for us - I've got a trick or two of my own. One of them is at my house, once I've pulled into the drive way and have my hands full of purses, groceries, diaper bag and such... I get Pauly out of his car seat and hand him the keys to the house. I say, "Pauly, go to the door and open it for mommy, here's the keys - now go to the door" - He takes the keys from me and runs to the backdoor and fishes through the keys trying to open the door for me as I gather bags and such and I follow right behind him getting us both safely to the door. (Our house is right by a pretty busy road so it could be pretty dangerous!) He's such a big boy and this trick has worked wonders!

I haven't got him to kick the tires yet, because he usually is just sitting in the shopping cart and I just set him right into the car seat but, with the new baby coming who knows how that will go - so the kicking of the tires training is in process...

Tonight, we were out on the back carport and right off the carport again, is that busy road. I was sitting on the ground working on putting back together my stroller (I took off the cover and washed it... suggestion: don't do this just buy a whole new one :) and I was dealing with like 25 screws and sitting on the ground a pregnant lady isn't going to get up and move quickly for nothing to chase a toddler that is running toward a busy road. So, I had him sit buy me in his little lawn chair, gave him a piece of paper towel to clean his dump truck with and put him in charge of holding my screwdriver aka "tool" - so I would work on getting a screw through the material and in the hole and then ask him to hand me the "tool" and he sat there and worked on cleaning his dump truck and handed me the "tool" for an hour! It rocked! I swear! Since he turned two, and I'm sure I'm just a dork about this, but I swear he has matured and is such a big kid all the sudden!

What tricks do you have/or did you have up your sleeves to keep your kids busy and safe?