Tornado Ben

     The problem with having an independent, creative child is that on any given day, he can decide that he does not need to listen to a flingin', flangin' word you have to say. Today just so happened to be one of those days.

     On our drive to the library today for storytime, Ben and I talked about listening, about cooperation, and how we were going into a quiet place where we would need to be polite, obedient, and sit still. "Okay, Mommy," Ben said. "I'll be a good boy."

     He held my hand as we walked in, took in all the sights and sounds, and behaved very well as we waited in the kid's section. I should've been suspicious because THIS is what I was in for:

     Well, maybe it wasn't THAT bad, but that's essentially how we were treated. Of the 8 or so kids in attendance, Ben was pretty much the only one who felt the need to be verbal in his responses to the reader.

     "Are you a horse?" asked the Librarian, as she read a story about ponies.
     "NOOOOOOO!" yelled Ben

     "Are you going to sit down now?"
     "I want to dance."

     "Who wants to hear another story?"
     "Hey, Mom! There's a crocodile!"

     No, really. There WAS a crocodile... it was a stuffed floor mat that all the other well behaved kids were sitting on. In the twenty minutes we were there, Ben changed seats no less than seventy four times, stood during the sitting time, sat during the standing time, clapped during the quiet part of the songs because he thought they were over, and made loud, verbose requests for cheese sticks.

     My whispered pleas for him to please just be quiet fell on deaf ears while we garnered what I consider to be the most intense look of disgust I have ever seen in my life.

     This lady's eyes cut me to my core and her judgement of me hit me square in the face. It hurt my feelings so much that Ben and I actually got up and left. While, yes, I may be exaggerating about the extent of Ben's actions (he wasn't really THAT bad), I'm not exaggerating about this. She was so mean with just a look, when B was only being a kid. He just turned 2 for crying out loud...

    We came home and read our own books. I let him ask as many questions as he wanted.

Terrible TWOS-day...

     My sweet, tiny terror is 2 years old. At this age, friends, family, and acquaintances are asking when he's going to get a little brother or little sister. After our day yesterday, my answer to this question is to laugh in their faces.

     The day started out like any other: Ben woke up at 6am and I coerced him into an hour more of sleep by convincing him that it wasn't time to get up yet because the sun was still asleep, too. After breakfast, we played blocks in his room and then watched an episode of the ever popular "Bubble Guppies".

     Play time resumed after this all-too brief respite, and at this point in the day, "play time" means running around like crazy in an attempt to expel all his energy. In his rush to get into some other kind of trouble, Ben decided he was done with his juice cup and threw it over his shoulder as he ran through the living room. Unfortunately, our *brand new* 51'' Plasma screen TV has a big, fat, target on it.

     B's juice cup cracked the TV in the lower left hand corner.

     In the beginning, it didn't look that bad. While I was screaming inside, "THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!" my calmer side was rationalizing, "You can't even really see the crack when the TV is on."

     ....and then the plasma started to bleed. The center of the crack began to grow big, purple splotches that started to run down the cracks. Again I thought, "At least it's not in the major line of sight. I can live with a small blemish in the corner."

     By nightfall, the plasma had bled into several lines across the bottom of the screen.... and then the picture went totally black. I had to resign myself to the fact that we had an $800 paper weight sitting on our TV stand. Bad news bears all around.

    When all of this tragedy first took place, I had an incredibly firm, VERY serious discussion with Dear Bennett about NOT THROWING THINGS in the house. It took every fiber of my being not to beat the crap out of him because I know deep down that he's like a dog and just doesn't understand. After five LONG minutes with his nose in the corner, I decided that maybe a better "punishment" would be to be removed from the situation and to go directly to bed. And that's where he spent the next four hours.

     By bedtime, even though the state of the television had gone from bad to worse to dead, we remained in somewhat good spirits with Ben. As I went into his room to clean it up for bedtime, I made a discovery....

     While he was serving his naptime sentence, and even though there are NO art supplies kept in his room, THIS is what I found.

     "It's orange, Mommy," he said.

     I cried until I laughed. Thank the Lord for magic erasers and red wine.