Cosmic payback

Or is it COMIC payback?

See, today I snuck in a little computer time while the boys were playing. I think it's important for them to develop some skills to play on their own, without constant adult intervention. It's a parenting strategy, damn it, not a desperate need to have a few minutes on my own on days when the boys don't nap. Oh geez, I need to start clearing a spot on my mantle for that June Cleaver award I'm sure is on its way...

Anyway, I used my few "free" minutes to write a reply to a friend's email where she tended, just a bit, toward over-explaining things. My reply may, perhaps, have teased her, just a little, I promise.

Well, while I'm busy thinking I'm so funny, the universe is conspiring to pay me back, courtesy of my wee little N-man. I thought he was playing with this annoying self-propelled Thomas train we have. It's kind of neat. It's battery-powered and it moves all on it's own. Sounds great, right? Well, it's surprisingly noisy and the boys both like to turn it on and let it roam all over the house until I'm on the verge of going mad from the constant sssssssss noise it makes.

So as I'm typing I hear N-man playing with the train in the bathroom. That's okay, we have the bathroom babyproofed of anything dangerous, and I'm right next door and I can hear everything. I spend my 5 minutes on the computer, then go in to see what he's doing.

And I discover that the noise the self-propelled train makes is the same as the noise of running water out of the tap. Assuming it's not hitting the sink but is instead hitting a pile of hand towels. N-man had piled all the hand towels into the sink, turned on the tap, and was making a pond. For a little plastic turtle.

Oh, and he's also managed, in those 5 minutes, to squirt out pretty much an entire bottle of hand soap into the sink, onto the counter, onto the soap bottle, and, of course, all over himself.

I just laughed...it's hard to get too mad at him when it's my own fault for not paying enough attention. It actually made me realize that they're getting big enough that we need to do a more effective job of laying down rules about things they used to be too little to do. It's only recently that they could even reach the faucets...before we didn't have to have a "no turning on the water except to wash hands or brush teeth" rule. Now I know we do.

So there you go...the universe sent me immediate punishment for a snarky email. Please let me apologize to both the universe and J. I loved your email!

Random totally related thought: The boys didn't nap again today. What's up with that? Aren't they too young to give up their nap? Do I need to start reading Healthy Sleep Habits to them again? They totally ignored all of Weissbluth's advice the first time I read it to them, but now they're older and might see the wisdom of it**.

**Totally kidding. I hated that book. Of course, my B-man is in the running for worst sleeper ever so maybe I should have taken the advice offered in the his book.