He wends his way through the house, disaster trailing his small frame; Legos and blocks are scattered down the stairs, various food containers are open with the contents strewn all over the kitchen, Scotch tape is lining my office floors, there’s toothpaste smeared on the sink, floor and toilet, a soaking wet roll of toilet paper sitting next to the faucet . . . and all this destruction has taken place before he’s even had his lunch.
That’s my four-year-old, Logan. He’s absolutely exhausting. In many ways, he’s my easiest child — constantly smiling, singing and skipping, and always glowing with an innate joy — but in some aspects, he’s definitely the most difficult. A raw and demanding curiosity coupled with a strong sense of independence equals a whirlwind of chaos.
It’s sort of like still having a toddler, only worse because he can reach higher, think harder and do a lot more damage than the average two-year-old. The hardest part about it is that I don’t think he means to be destructive most of the time; he’s been very curious about how things work since babyhood, as well as figuring out cause and effect.
It probably seemed like a good idea to put a roll of toilet paper in the sink and give it a soaking until it puffed out to twice its normal size. It was undoubtedly great fun to flush his sister’s toothbrush down the toilet, causing backups and overflows of really disgusting matter before we figured out what the problem was. So much fun, that he proceeded to flush both his sisters’ toothbrushes yesterday morning, even though he has been forbidden to do said deed.
He’s taken my car keys and hidden them in my desk, lost my wedding/engagement ring (permanently, unfortunately), combined the last bag of my favorite ground coffee with cooked spinach and a touch of water, dumped whole boxes of cereal on the floor, saturated the entire bathroom floor during a bath, repeatedly poured his Legos and blocks down the stairs purely for the entertainment of watching them fall, and a host of other activities that have meant major clean-up for me.
Perhaps many kids do this sort of thing, but none of my other kids did, so this is a new experience for me. And it’s never-ending. If he’s not in my sight, I’m worried, and almost always with good reason.
When he was a baby, he’d spend long periods of time turning toy cars over and over, running his finger along the wheels, absorbed in the mechanics of spinning tires. At age two, I watched in amazement as he placed every piece in the game Perfection within a few minutes. Those pieces are tiny, and many of them are quite similar.
For Logan, the world is an exciting place, with endless concepts and the workings of household objects to be explored. I’d like to say that I share in his enthusiasm for discovering how things work, but that would be a lie. When his “discoveries” and “inventions” create wreckage and chaos, which is nearly always, I’m not pleased.
However, when he grows up to be a successful engineer or architect, I’ll know that I was behind the whole thing.
