A few months ago, we bought Mateo a set of play tools to play with. He played with them for a while and then lost interest afterwards. However, we bought him a small bookshelf last week which Ramil assembled upon getting home. It was the first time that Mateo got to watch Ramil ‘build’ something. He was insisting ‘help Teo Dada’ which means he will help Ramil. Ramil was at his wits’ end trying to limit Mateo’s meddling because Mateo wanted to use the screwdriver and hammer also. It was a shame that I forgot about his play tools amidst his trash toy boxes.

The next day, when Mateo played with his toys he re-discovered his tools and immediately put them to use just like how Ramil used them. I collected all his tools and improvised a tool bag for him by looking for one of Ramil’s old belt bags in the shipping boxes we were using for storage. Mateo had a lot of fun pretending to be our handyman.