Wreaking Havoc

Absolutely no one...and I do mean no one is as good at wreaking havoc as four year old boys. Unless it's perhaps 5 year old boys. I'm not sure - we haven't gotten that far yet. (And if he doesn't slow down, he may never make it to 5!)

Harry is my darling angel boy - God's gift awarded to me after enduring the pre-pubescent years of both of my lovely daughters. The first three years of his life were a dream come true. He was brilliant, adorable, funny, sweet, loving...everything a mommy could want. And then one day... he turned FOUR.



Now I've heard that the twos are supposed to be terrible, and the threes nothing to sniff at either, but I'm telling you, four really takes the cake. Today has been the perfect example.

Today, for the fourth day in a row, I had to take my darling Harry to work with me, because I can't afford daycare with the impending doom of unemployment in a couple of weeks, and his sisters are at a church camp for girls. So, he's been parked in my office "helping" me. Today, he began our adventure by refusing to eat his breakfast, and slipping a slice of ham between the chair and the wall in hopes I wouldn't notice. (The icky smell started giving it away by lunch time.) As folks came into my office, Harry pounced on them and forced them to watch clips from his Spiderman video, shouting, "Wait-wait-wait!! You can't leave until you see this!!" (Keep in mind, he didn't actually KNOW any of these people.) At one point, I left him briefly unattended while I went over a teacher's final evaluation with her in the room next door. I was rewarded to find that in the interim, he chewed a piece of gum, stretched it into wispy spider-web strands and managed to get it all over the upholstery, the carpet, the wall, and most of my desk. (Of course, I didn't see any of this until he jumped up and hugged me, at which point, while picking bits of gum out of his hair, I found that the front of my best black blouse was glued to his shirt with 9 million tidbits of gum. Who knew a single stick of gum could go so far???)

Needless to say, I didn't let him out of my sight until we came home, at which point, after he "helped" me water the garden (and dragged the hose all over my squash vines, utterly destroying them), and "helped" me take the garbage to the street (I have to admit, it was nice not to have to pick up all of the trash that the dog had strewn all over the yard by myself - even if he found it a little too complicated to actually put it back in the garbage bag). By the time I survived these escapades, I couldn't wait to get him bathed and in the bed. So I fixed his tub, put him in it, and shut the bathroom door (which I normally wouldn't do, except our cat just had a litter of kittens 4 weeks ago (yes I actually thought the darn cat was a boy), and we're storing them in the bathroom for safety reasons until they're weaned). Then I sat down, only a few feet away, for a few minutes of peace. Oh what price peace!!

After about 5 minutes or so, I realized he'd stopped making his jolly splashing noises, which is unusual, but not a bad thing, since I could still hear him talking. So I went on with my relaxing moment, until I finally heard the delighted burst of laughter that spurts from him like a babbling brook when he is truly delighted. This is always the first sign of absolute mayhem.

So, I go bursting into the bathroom to find my naked child very quickly shutting the under-sink cabinet door and spinning around, keeping his hand on the door and looking very guilty. This would have drawn slightly more of my attention had I not just stepped in a puddle of water about 3 inches deep which consumed the ENTIRE bathroom floor.

As I crossed my arms over my chest, he bit his bottom lip, slapping on his most pitiful, sorrowful look, and stepped out from in front of the cabinet... the doors instantly popping open, with five drowned little rats tumbling out and mewing for all they were worth.

Two hours, a scrubbed floor, and five blow-dried kittens later, my little havoc-master is in bed. And I just spent 5 minutes typing this... delaying the inevitable ... dealing with the mama cat's method of protest...the big dumpy she just took in the middle of my freshly scrubbed bathroom floor.

There should have been a Calgon commercial for today...