Category: struggles

What Not To Get For Christmas

This year Santa brought Thing 2 a transformer, Optimus Prime. It’s a robot that turns into a truck. The age range was 5+ but at 4 1/2 years I thought he could manage with some assistance from his big brother.

When I saw the instructions I knew immediately he’d have no chance to transform it. I dutifully started on step 1 of 28. It didn’t take long to realize this was no ordinary assembly.

I have successfully assembled hundreds of toys, bikes, cribs, and high chairs. I can install car seats.

As a kid I took stuff apart just to put it back together.

I have a degree in, of all things, mechanical engineering.

I write sophisticated computer programs for a living.

Yet, it took me 9 hours to transform Optimus Prime into a truck! Sort of… because the wheels still don’t lay flat.

Here is what it looked before and after:

Didn’t See That One Coming

File this under I didn’t see that coming. Today I got an email from Thing 3’s teacher. It was cryptic enough to send my imagination racing.

The teacher said, “Are you able to see the room? (there are web cameras) We need to talk when you come to pick him up”

I couldn’t imagine what I’d see. I figured he injured himself. Or trashed his clothes. Or broke something expensive.

This is what I saw. The one screen capture doesn’t do it justice. The classroom was completely trashed.

What you don’t see is the other half of the room, where there were shredded scraps of paper everywhere.

Thing 3 had been on a tear. Picking up containers and dumping them out. As soon as the teacher tried to clean up one mess, he was on to the next. He wasn’t angry or having a tantrum. He was just having a good time.

“It just happened so fast. I’ve never quite seen this before,” said the teacher. Coming from an experienced teacher with a room full of two year olds, that says something.

When I tell people Thing 3 is very active and into everything, even for a two year old, I don’t think the full impact comes across just how much work it is to keep up with him. This gives a glimpse. He is off the charts.

Christmas Destruction

Thing 3 is the master of destruction, leaving a path of wreckage wherever he goes. Why should Christmas be any different?

We took the usual precautions and put the breakable ornaments out of his reach. Or so we thought. He’s already managed to break three ornaments. Usually by throwing the ball shaped ones. I have no idea how he gets them down. I suspect he throws things at the tree until one falls, like a squirrel getting acorns.

Taking The Long Way Home

A guy I know, who is in “the business”, and performs as a stand-up comedian, once told me that when a joke takes a long time to get to the punchline, when it starts as a seemingly unrelated story but at the end reveals the connection, it’s referred to as “taking the long way home”. Well, in this post, I will be taking the long way home.

You may recall the Seinfeld episode where Newman explains why postal workers sometimes go crazy. He talks about how the his job is never finished, there is always more mail to deliver. And a new batch comes each day. The mail never stops!

Here is the scene in case you never saw it, or need a refresher.

I’ll bet you are wondering where I’m going with this one. Stay with me.

I’ve started to feel like Newman. For me, it isn’t mail, but laundry. Now that they are getting bigger, and their clothes are bigger I guess, the Things are making more and more dirty laundry. We always have more to do.

I think we’ve done at least one load of laundry every day for the last two weeks. And it only gets worse as the weather gets colder. Long sleeve shirts and jeans instead of shorts and t-shirts. And the socks! How is it that we can do an entire basket of laundry and not one sock matches?! And we’re never, ever done. As soon as one basket is washed, dried, folded and put away, there is another dirty load ready to go. When laundry never stops!!!!

And that, my friends, is what we in the business call taking the long way home.

Curious Trouble

Toddlers are troublemakers curious by nature.?? They touch, push, pull, prod, and climb anything and everything in their path.? It’s how they learn about their world.

It’s also how trouble happens.? I’ve posted before about Thing 3’s curiosity, which even for a toddler, is extraordinarily high.? For a while he was very curious about the water in the toilets and only wanted to put his hands in it.

Having just moved to the two year olds room at daycare, his new teachers are just learning of the new level of curiosity that Thing 3 brings.? And these are teachers who spend all day with two year olds so I would think they’ve seen it all before.

One of Thing 3’s passions is running.? Fast.? Into the unknown.? Because he’s curious, I guess.? We try to give him an outlet for his running.? The mall is a great place for this.? Point him in a direction, put him down and he’s OFF.? Like a wind up race car.? Into the Banana Republic and behind a rack of clothes.? Oh yeah, once he finds a new place, he likes to hide from me.? I”ve lost him more than once in the aisles at Target or Michaels because he ran off to hide.

On day one of being in his new classroom, the teacher told me? Wow, he is fast.? I opened up the door to the class and he was halfway down the hall before I could get out the door.? Yeah, he’s like a puppy that can’t be let off the leash even indoors.

Then today I get a strange instant message from the teacher.? She wanted to know if Thing 3 has ever pulled or tried to pull a fire alarm.? Apparently he’s been working for days to stack objects in the classroom so he can climb them and pull the alarm.

Fortunately, it’s a first.? But given his curiosity level it’s very believable.? I just hope this is a phase and not an indicator of trouble to come.

The Best Parts of My Day

I will preface this post by stating clearly, for the record, that I enjoy spending time with my kids.

But I’m sure other parents out there can appreciate this, especially those with more than one kid close in age and young ones like mine. Just because you enjoy spending time with your kids, doesn’t mean you want to spend all your time with your kids.

I can’t be the only one who thinks the best part of my day is after I drop the kids off at preschool and get to my desk at work. I eat a bagel, sip a hot caffeinated beverage, catch up on the day’s headlines, and enjoy the QUIET. Oh yeah, for those co-workers who read my blog, I also get right down to work.

To put yourself into my state of mind when I get to work, check out this old post about why I love Mondays.

The second best part of my day comes after 9 hours of sitting in meetings and in front of a computer. I walk through the door and I get ambushed three times by a little person running full steam and yelling “Daaaaaaaaaaddddddyyyy!” Each one wants to play and tell me what they did during the day. All at the same time.

Well, usually that’s the case. Sometimes I walk into a scene of pure chaos and deafening noise levels. That’s when I quietly close the door and sit in my car for another 20 minutes. Just kidding of course (SuburbanMommy will read this).

Security Breach

There has been a major security breach at the SuburbanHouse.

I had devised a sophisticated, high tech barrier to prevent Thing 3 from going upstairs. At first because we didn’t want him to tumble down the stairs, but now because we don’t want him getting into everything in the bedrooms and bathrooms. He’s famous for hitting the buttons on clock radios and inadvertently setting middle of the night wakeup calls.

I Am Shocked

I am in total shock right now.?? Thing 3 is reading quietly in his crib.? Thing 1 and Thing 2 are playing nicely together upstairs.? They are playing games and doing puzzles together.? They aren’t fighting.? They are using indoor voices.

I am in the office downstairs, enjoying some quiet time on the computer.? I think I can see a faint light at the end of the tunnel.? Where I actually get some time to myself before they go to bed, instead of being too tired to do anything except go to sleep myself.

I expect this calm to be short lived.? I can already hear the voices are past the indoor voice level.? And now there is an argument over the rules in the Spiderman Yahtzee game.? Oh well.? At least I can dream.