Sunday, May 10, 2009

Don't Leave Home Without It

I like to think that I entered motherhood with my eyeswide open. I have several younger siblings, more than two decades of babysitting and loads of professional education experience. That said, I will admit that sometimes I have to stop and say to myself, "I never thought I would have a need to say this." This happened not too long ago as I was trying to get Stellan to load up into the car. He, like many others his age, feels the strong urge to never leave the home with empty hands. He'll grab whatever he sees or was playing with and will bring it with him.
"Stellan, let's leave the blender cup here. We won't need it on our way to pick up Daddy. How about a nice tupperware lid instead?" That was the exchange that caught me off guard. Even better was when Kevin got home and said, "What is the blender cup doing here by the stuffed alligator puppet?" I had to explain that the only way Stellan would leave it behind was to tell him that the poor gator would be lonely without it.
When we recently cleaned out the car, here are some the items recovered from the back seat area:
- a football
- a volleyball
- several smaller balls
- a toy truck
- a tupperware container
- a tupperware lid that didn't match
- two spoons
- toy syrup container
- a rock
- a toy button
- several magnets
- a toy airplane
- various stackers and blocks
- a toy train

I'm ashamed to tell you how many new items now populate the back seat in the short time since we cleaned.

5 comments:

D said...

LOL! Matt keeps cleaning out my van and the next day it is filled again. oops! My line with Kaden is always, "Let's leave it in the van so it doesn't get lost." Now he wants to leave everything in the van I think. Hey, at least it's not lost. :)

Hilary said...

None of these things seem weird or uncommon to me. Does that mean I've been fully initiated into toddlerville?

Dormommy said...

Wow, no food wrappers? No animal crackers? no goldfish? The other day I found a pacifier. Nome of my kids use the things so HOW!!!

Car backseats are strange that way, I think they are related to dryers...

krissiecook said...

I didn't photograph the big bag of trash we removed. Don't worry, plenty of goldfish, wrappers and other disposables.

deannah said...

don't think of it as needing to clean out the car. think of it as a spur-of-the-moment bag of tricks. you never know when you'll need those random things that seem like trash to entertain the kids at an unexpected moment!