A loud thump woke us the other night shortly after 1 a.m.
Before I could even get out of bed, it was followed by crying.
I jumped up immediately. Hoping the dizzy spell I had was not the big one, I ran toward the kids’ side of the house and found Beckett not in his bed. He had rolled off and fallen flat on the floor.
As soon as I picked him up off the floor, he immediately stopped crying and fell back asleep. All seemed fine, besides the pounding inside my chest from being startled awake.
It wasn’t until later when we realized exactly what happened because a red bump surfaced under his eye. We were just hoping the loud thump was Beckett hitting the floor. Instead, it looks like on his way to the floor, he knocked his head on his desk chair, which just happened to be right where he rolled off.
Later, when we told him he would probably have a black eye, he asked if he cried. When I told him he did a little bit, he seemed so disappointed in himself.
He then asked if people would be able to see his blackeye with his glasses on. When I assured him they would, he seemed okay.
Two new rules are in place at the house as a result of recent incidents with Carson.
One, he can no longer have unfettered access to the bathrooms. Secondly, there can be no glasses left below the five-foot mark around our house.
Let’s take the latter first.
Carson, 4, has developed an interesting affinity to pouring out any glass he finds.
We are well trained by this point in our parenting lives and have been since Beckett went through this stage. No drinks are ever left anywhere, unless they are above their reach and away from obstacles they can use for elevation.
It doesn’t happen very often anymore, but Beckett occasionally forgets and leaves a half-filled cup somewhere unattended. We keep an eye out on these sorts of things but every now and again it will slip by us.
One person who appears to have an alarm that alerts him when an unattended cup is present is Carson, of course.
As soon as he gets his little chubby hands on a cup, all he wants to do is one thing — dump it out. It can be on the floor, on the table, on the couch, on the dog. It doesn’t matter so long as it’s empty and it’s not on himself.
What’s astonishing and really gets under my skin is he empties it and then puts it in the sink. That’s intentional and a game in his mind I’m convinced.
At a basketball clinic last Saturday, this fascination played out again. Rather than participate in the drills along with his brother, he was immediately drawn to climbing on the bleachers. That was fine by me. What caught me off guard was the amount of half-filled cups present. Besides being odd, I couldn’t help but laugh given Carson’s passion for that sort of thing.
With me distracted watching Beckett dribbling around, Carson was able to get to a half-filled coffee cup, so I apologize to the owner of a green hoodie that got some of its contents.
At home, since it’s become extremely rare for a cup to be anywhere, I have noticed Carson paying much more attention to the dogs’ water bowl of late. This began about two weeks ago, and I sternly reminded him what was not going to happen. He laughed and immediately shook his head as if he understood that was a no-no.
Of course, a week or so later, I found the dogs’ water bowl completely upended and water everywhere. When I confronted Carson about it, he vigorously shook his head sideways and pointed at the dogs. When I asked him if the dogs did it, he immediately ran away mysteriously. He returned with his voice box, feverishly pushing the yes button over and over again.
I didn’t buy it and made him help me clean it up.
Carson’s other new obsession led me to the hardware store’s plumbing aisle during my lunch break on Wednesday in search of an auger and a heavy-duty plunger. As usual, I was also seeking some free advice, which I got, thanks to Rick at Adkins.
For some reason, my son likes to put things in the toilet and flush them. He gets some sort of twisted joy out of it that I do not share.
Poor Pam has lost a number of cream products, and I have had to subsequently test my gag reflex a couple times by digging them out of the toilet. Up until this week, nothing had gotten jammed down deep in the toilet, causing any major problems.
However, only time will tell what all has been put in the toilet in recent weeks, but one thing is for sure there is currently a train piece in our upstairs commode.
After his bath the other night, we were walking to his room to get dressed when he immediately turned around. I didn’t think of anything of it, assuming he had the calling and would join me in a minute. That’s the last time I do that.
When I found him, he was standing over the toilet, naked of course, with a huge grin on his face. That changed immediately when he saw my reaction as the water started to rise in the toilet, confirming it was stopped up.
Neither the plunger, the auger or my arm could unclog it. I’m still hoping to figure it out, but I will probably have to call the guy eventually.