So, with Thing 1 leading the way, he and Thing 2 set out to clean the basement. They may even have told me first. I don’t remember, they tell me a lot of stuff.  SuburbanMommy was enjoying her Mothers Day outside the house, so I had my hands full.   I’m not sure what they were doing, I was just glad they weren’t fighting.  I assumed cleaning the basement meant what it always had until that point, which consisted of picking up all the toys and balls and other stuff.

A little while later, I spotted Thing 2 on his way to the basement. He was wearing goggles and had a roll of paper towels. His socks were soaking wet.

Me: “What are you guys doing down there?”

Thing 2: “We’re cleaning”

It was time to take a look.  With Thing 4 in my arms, I went to the basement to check out this cleaning operation.  I found the basement carpet was wet.  Really wet.  There were puddles of water on the floor in the bathroom.  Several towels were soaking wet.  They were wetting the towels, then carrying them, dripping wet, to parts of the basement to “clean” them.  How adorable.  To be more efficient, Thing 1 instructed Thing 2 to use the other sink at the wet bar.  Now there were two sources of puddles on the floor.

Let’s look at the bright side. They were trying to help. How often does that happen? They were also working together without fighting. That’s a good thing.  After using nearly an entire roll of paper towels to soak up the water, I asked:

“Is there anything else you cleaned I should know about?”

“No.” Then he thought about it. “Yes.”

“What?”

“The pillows”

They had taken the pillows from the couch and held them under the water in the sink to wash them.  Then put them back on the couch.   Adorable.

We did the usual triple bath last night – all three boys in the tub at the same time.  It can get crazy and cause a mess, but it’s the quickest way to get baths over with.  Thing 3 likes to has to stay in the tub until all the water is out.  Even then it’s a fight to get him to come out.  This kid loves water.

He was sitting in the tub, with no water, when I was helping Thing 2 brush his hair.  When I looked back at the tub, whoomp! there it was.   I had my iPhone handy to snap a photo for this post but I thought I’d spare you all and leave something to the imagination.  Since he isn’t potty trained I tried to turn it into a teachable moment.  “Poop goes in the potty. “  He wasn’t very impressed.  I fear we’re in for more of these adventures as he goes through potty training.   Does anyone know a potty training “expert” I can call?

And, apparently, I shouldn’t assume the shoes I put on him in the morning are the same ones he’ll be wearing when I pick him up at preschool.

Notice anything wrong with these shoes? I didn’t. Until we got home.

You might see that one is newer and cleaner. You might also notice, upon closer inspection, that one is 1 1/2 sizes bigger than the other. And, if you are really sharp (I’m not) you’ll see they are BOTH right footed.

That’s exactly what I learned only after we got home. I’m just glad to know the other parent did the same thing.

This week Thing 3 found my work Blackberry. Normally, it password locks the screen after a few minutes of inactivity, but he got it too fast. Still, I didn’t think there was too much trouble he could cause.

Somehow, he managed to send three emails. The first was a reply sent to an email from my boss’s boss. Thing 3’s email read “Mfjjkkxkd”.

The next email was sent in reply to the same email from my boss’s boss. Except this time he managed to use Reply All. Luckily, there was only one other recipient. The email was “Dfdidfiufufuiufioid”.

The final email sent by Thing 3 was a reply to a weekly department email, again from my boss’s boss, that goes out to a list of hundreds of people, including all the Senior VP’s in the department. This email read “Eierelririrreee”.

Very fortunate for me, he did not hit Reply All on that one.

Shortly after 6am this morning, Thing 1 woke up and ventured downstairs. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem because he is 6 and knows how to turn the TV on and usually waits for everyone else to wake up.

Except this morning he was excited about the snow and wanted to see how it looked outside.

So he opened the front door to look out the glass storm door. Which set off the alarm and abruptly woke everyone up. If you think waking to an alarm clock is unpleasant, imagine a high decibel, high pitched noise designed to scare burglars away.

Before moving in together, Thing 1 and Thing 2 had different personalities, routines, and interests. Thing 1 liked to recite sports statistics, go to sleep early with the lights off, and he was generally serious and reserved. Thing 2 liked imagination play, regularly having conversations with his dragons and toys for a good hour in his bed before finally falling asleep with the lights on.

From what I’ve seen in just a few weeks each is becoming more like the other. It’s like instead of a Thing 1 and Thing 2, we now have two Thing One-And-A-Half’s. Some of this merging into Thing 1.5 has been a good influence. Thing 2 is now more interested in reading, sports (good for me), and other interests and abilities like his big brother. And Thing 1 has become more imaginative and shows a sillier side. Surprisingly, they have become even more inseparable. I honestly don’t know how they don’t get tired of each other.

But, we also have a spreading of the not so good habits. They now both stay up late and play in their room to the point where we need to go up at least 3 times a night to tell them to quiet down and go to sleep. What used to be a very organized and orderly bedroom under just the management of Thing 1, has evolved into the just put everything on the floor system favored by Thing 2.

All in all, it’s been a net positive outcome. Which I have to say was an unexpected, very pleasant surprise.

“Where does snow come from”, “How do airplanes fly?”, “How does Santa go to every house in one night”, “How many points do you get for a touchdown”.

These are very important questions that I’m happy to answer. I enjoy the challenge of coming up with an answer they can understand.

Then there are questions you don’t want to hear.

We were driving home from school one day. All 3 Things were in their seats, watching the TV, quiet and tired from their day. Thing 2 broke the silence, out of the blue, and asked a question.

“What’s a pussy?”

Umm. Gulp. My mind was racing for an answer. I stalled. “What did you say?”

As innocent as can be, “Pussy. What is a pussy?”

Then, I realized what they were watching on the TV. Sylvester and Tweety Bird. Sylvester is a cat. A PUSSYcat.

Whew. Dodged that one.

It is certainly no small undertaking to get all of them changed in the locker room, get a swim diaper on Thing 3, chase after them in the pool, then dried off and dressed again. But when the weather is this cold, it’s necessary. We got changed, stuffed all our stuff into a locker, and headed to the pool.

After just 20 minutes of fun in the pool, the lifeguard whistles blew. Adult swim? Really? Then the word quickly spread. There was poop in the pool at the bottom of the slides near where we were playing. Pool closed for at least 45 minutes. Game over.

Thing 3 was a prime suspect. Come to think of it, he hadn’t had his usual dirty diaper that morning. I checked his swim diaper and it appeared clean. But like JFK’s shooting, we can never be sure.

Our preschool has infants through kindergarten, with two or three classrooms for each age group. There were easily 150 kids in the Halloween parade.

As we watched the kids walk by, every single one was wearing a costume. Firemen, princesses, Spiderman, witches and all the usual suspects.

Except for one kid. This poor kid was in the parade in street clothes. Jeans and a red shirt. What terrible parents forgot their kid’s costume?

Any guesses who this kid was? Yes, it was Thing 3. For the second year in a row.

In our defense, we did bring the costume. A Yoda robe, hat, and ears. He just refused to wear it. Perhaps “refused” is the wrong word. More like the king of all tantrums despite the teachers’ best efforts. We weren’t surprised.

Here is Thing 3 as Yoda. Minus the Yoda.

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.