Most every transition has been tough with him. Like all three year olds, he is a creature of habit and routine. But Thing 3 takes routine to the extreme. His daily routines sometimes border on the bizarre. Every detail is important, from which episode of Diego to watch, which color cereal bowl he uses, who opens the car door, and on and on. It’s a delicate act that we have all but perfected.

Until a new milestone occurs that throws a wrench into his carefully scripted world. Moving from a crib to a bed was a big deal. New shoes? Watch out. New classroom at daycare? Forget about it.

And so, we have dreaded potty training. We’ve been casually introducing him but he’ll have none of it. Now with just one month to go before he moves up to preschool, where being potty trained is a requirement, we are forcing the issue.

Yesterday was 12 hours of potty training bootcamp. We threw away the diapers (or so he thinks) and I watched him like a hawk all day, and offered him bribes of candy to sit on the potty. I had to clean pee off the carpet more than once but cold turkey is the only way to go with him. It was marginally successful.

Today we sent him to daycare in underwear and with four extra changes of clothes. He came home wearing underwear but with a pull-up underneath. For him, that’s actually progress.  It’s going to be a long, long week.

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?

Since the arrival of Thing 4 I have had to up my multitasking game. Here I am one morning this week. I’m feeding Thing 4, with a bluetooth headseat in my ear so I can be on a conference call for work, while refereeing a game of dodgeball between Thing 1 and Thing 2.  What you can’t see in the picture is Thing 3 who is probably climbing on something he shouldn’t be.

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.

Since the seats were all out I thought it would be a good idea to vacuum the car before installing the new one. Here’s a picture to give an idea what the back seat was like. I’m not sure the photo does it justice. It was disgusting.

“Daddy, sit”, “Daddy read book”, and my personal favorite “On Daddy head” which means put this on your head.

I suppose I bring this on myself because I put things on my head to entertain him.

This hard to see, grainy image is not a captured terrorist. It is me being held captive by a 2 year old so he can jump on, climb on, and torture me by hitting my head with books, toys, and various stuffed animals. And I love every minute of it.

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.

Well, in the world of parenting, unfortunately, there are no sick days.

I’m entering day 3 of the worst cough, sore throat, headache, congestion you can imagine. Yesterday I was able to take a sick day at work.

But there was no sick day from parenting. I still had to get the Things dressed, fed, and take them to school. In the afternoon, I still had to do 3 separate art projects in 3 different classrooms as part of Parents Appreciation Week because I committed to it before I got sick. I still had to do a triple bath night, and a Lego project with Thing 3 I had promised him for Friday night because I wasn’t able to be at his Parents Appreciation event because the school scheduled all three at the same time.

Parents Appreciation Week? That’s when the preschool schedules a week’s worth of activities for you with your kids when they’d otherwise be far away at school.

Now today is Saturday and it’s more of the same. But it’s the weekend, you say? Time to get some rest?

In my world, there is another reality which is, There Is No Resting On Weekends.

You probably see a normal, well organized shelf full of toys. In fact, it’s from Thing 1’s Kindergarten class. But that’s not how Thing 3, a troublemaking two year old, sees it.

I stopped by the Kindergarten classroom, which was empty, to get Thing 1’s jacket. Thing 3 was with me. I got the jacket while he explored the rest of the room. There is a lot of interesting stuff in a Kindergarten room, especially to a two year old.

We were only there a few seconds. That’s all it takes. Thing 3 saw the same normal shelf and thought it would be fun to dump everything on the floor. So that’s what he did.

Do you see the largest bucket with about a thousand teeny tiny Legos? He dumped that one on the floor first.

In the movie Unforgiven there is a line “When confronted by superior numbers, an experienced gunfighter will always fire on the best shot first.” They have a sixth sense about them.

Thing 3 went for the bucket which would do the biggest amount of damage first. I now know exactly how this incident happened.