Feb.25, 2008: Zach's Busy Day

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Zachary must have realized that today is a special day – his Poppi and his Nana’s birthdays. He behaved “extra special” today in honor of the occasion. First, he colored some birthday cards with crayons – a first for him. He generally just uses the markers, because they are so easy to clean up, but today we tried something different. He was quite perplexed at first because there were no tops to put on or take off. Zach soon saw this as an advantage – he quickly discovered the joy of coloring with a crayon in each hand.

Later in the day I was trying my hardest to get some “administrative” work done on the computer (all part of my role as Domestic Engineer), and I begged Zach to please go play nicely and I would join him in a bit. I was not really paying any attention to what he was doing, but I did see him coming back and forth into the living room. I didn’t really care what he was doing since he was being quite and giving me a moment to get stuff done. Finally, I got up off the couch to join the real world. Much to my dismay, Zach had taught himself a new game: Empty the closets. He had opened all of the closets in our room and removed everything as far as he could reach: shoes, towels, washcloths, sheets, pillowcases, and so on. [I later found that he had cleaned out his own sock drawer, but for some reason put all his stuff in the trash can. Zachary also took Art’s clothes from the bed and put them in his dirty clothes box in his room.] There was a large pile of our stuff in the doorway to the living room. This pile had been hidden from my view on the couch by the black leather recliner. Zach was quite proud of his accomplishment. I was wondering to myself what in the world it was all for until I watched him deposit the last washcloth on the top of the pile, throw his hands above his head, and fall dramatically on the pile. Now this is a typical game that Zach plays, but only in our bed. Art will fluff up all the covers into a pile for Zach to fall on. Apparently, unable to crawl into our bed on his own, he made his own pile. Sigh. I started to remove linens one by one until I was left with only the shoe pile at the bottom. Zachary had been nice enough to allow me to clean up all the linens, but when I got to the shoes, he had other ideas. He threw himself on the pile to protect them, then rolled around on the pile a bit. Silly kid! I could not help myself and started laughing, which of course got Zach laughing as well.

To end his busy afternoon, he got put down for a nap that he did not want to take. After about 45 minutes of him just chatting in bed, I went in there (where he was standing up w/ his trucks), admonished him, and made him lie down. 5 minutes of screaming and he was fast asleep. I peeked in on him, and saw that he had fallen asleep sideways in his crib. How he was able to fall asleep like this I do not know, but he didn’t even notice when I moved him to a more comfortable position.

I am hoping we don’t have TOO many of those types of ‘busy days’.