Due to our recent (and ongoing) move, I don’t know where most of my possessions are. Among the missing is my camera. I have an idea where it might be but I’m afraid to go look in case its not there. So I’ve missed out on a lot of good pictures. So I don’t forget the things that have happened, the following is a list of pictures I WOULD have taken if I’d only had my camera.
1. Drew showers with goggles.
A few years ago Drew started asking to take showers. He wanted to be a big boy and I think he feels like he doesn’t see enough action in a bath. Plus his dad showers and he wants to do everything Justin does and this is where the goggles come in. To be fair, Drew had this idea first. His goggles have been showing up in the shower for years and we call him Scuba Steve like on Big Daddy. Justin recently had lasik surgery and needed to protect his eyes when he showered so he also started using his goggles. When Drew saw Justin’s goggles in our tub he was over the moon. I heard him saying “I do that too Dad! I shower with my goggles too!” But Justin didn’t act very enthused about them having this in common and I got a vibe like he wanted to change the subject. I asked him about it later, why he acted too cool for shower goggles. He said because he’s the dad and he doesn’t want Drew to think that he’s in there wearing his goggles, playing and sliding around on his bum like Drew does. This made me laugh for 20 minutes. First because it’s so funny when Drew does all those things, and second because I couldn’t stop picturing Justin doing all those things. That night Drew’s goggles made a come back and I had no camera. He’s SO cute with his crazy shower hair and his goggles, laughing and sliding from one end of the tub to the other on his bum. This isn’t a picture I would have posted here but I wish I had one. Because someday he will be too cool to wear his goggles at bath time and I’ll need a reminder.
2. Drew fixes the wall.
I’ve hung somewhere around 2000 pictures in my old house so I had somewhere around 2000 nail holes to fix. I was using some spackle on a few holes in his room where he was watching a movie on his little DVD player and he asked me what it was. When I told him he said, “That is awesome.” with more seriousness than I thought a tub of spackle warranted. This was the first warning that I missed. The second came a couple minutes later when he when he kicked his dog out of that room and shut the door. He doesn’t like to misbehave in front of our dog Duke, I’ve yet to find out why. Maybe he is uncomfortable with the idea of any witness, even a dog. Shutting the door is also a red flag. Since Halloween he has been a big scaredy cat about being in any room by himself. We go through this every October. My third warning was the length of silence coming from that room. Always a bad sign. So it should have been no surprise when I walked in to find the entire container of spackle on the wall and my little boy making a beeline for the door. It was a perfect circle, probably 2 feet wide. I sent him to time out and I wish I could say he learned his lesson but I’m not optimistic. We tried so hard to not laugh but Justin failed spectacularly. When I could finally hold it together enough to take him in there and explain why he was in trouble I didn’t dare to even look at the part of the wall he “fixed” because it was so funny. Justin tried to participate but couldn’t keep a straight face. I’m not sure it would have been a good idea to take a picture of this because our parental authority was hanging by a thread with all the laughing and I think it would have sent the wrong message. But still. I wish I had something to remember it by.
3. Drew is reunited with long lost toys/Halloween costumes.
This actually would have been a slide show, that’s how many pictures I missed out on. The worst part about moving is that all of your belongings multiply. They hook up when you are not looking and produce offspring in the form of stuff you never knew you had. Or stuff you forgot you had. It’s the worst. But not for Drew. For him it’s like Christmas morning every five minutes and the celebrating can be heard down the street. He found all kinds of things, but the most notable find were the pants to his army guy costume from 2 years ago. He can’t zip them up and they don’t even go to his ankles. More like army guy capris. Also, they are made of a canvasy material so they couldn’t have offered much in the way of comfort but he still tried to wear them to bed every night. And oddly, he preferred to go shirtless rather than wear the army guy shirt. Every time he walked by in this get-up I grabbed him and hugged him until he got sick of it and started taking detours around me. But how can you not hug a little munchkin wearing little tiny pants with his tummy sticking out?
I was, however, able to get this pic with my phone.
This is Drew in time out for pulling my drapes down. By drapes I mean drapery liners hung with safety pins until the drapes I ordered arrive. So I can understand why he didn’t see these as permanent fixtures and I think I was more upset by the way he pulled them down. I was walking in to the front room from the kitchen and I turned the corner to see Drew, who is on his tippy toes with both arms wrapped around the left drape(ery liner), drop to his knees. This brought all the drapes and the rod down. I fished him out of the yards of material and sent him to a temporary time out site already situated at the top of the stairs. I sat down on the stairs talk to him about it and when I asked him why he would have done that. He said he wanted it to be brighter in the front room but he was also claiming that it was an accident. He looked so sad and cute so I took a picture and then let him out of time out. Because I’m such a push over.
