Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Little Brothers and Too Much Time Indoors

Patch was in a mood yesterday.  He is a sweet, cuddly little boy who, in typical two year old fashion can go from zero to tyrant in about ten seconds.

It started when he wanted to play with the bouncy horse that Sadie was bouncing on.  To be totally honest I'm pretty sure the reason Sadie was bouncing on the horse was because she saw Patch looking at it and seeing a sibling glance at a toy, especially in the dead of winter, instantly makes that toy 1000 times more attractive (it becomes 5000 times more attractive if the sibling in question is actually playing with the toy and you can get it away from them).

After a few minutes of bouncing I instituted the my-head-is-starting-to-hurt-from-Patch-yelling-that-it's-his-turn-rule and asked Sadie is she couldn't give her brother a turn sometime in the near, near future.  The horse had lost his shiny wonderfulness so she happily jumped off and after halfheartedly trying to lift her brother onto the horse, stepped aside so that I could help him up.

There was relative calm for a few minutes that looked something like this (you can see Patch riding on the horse in the back ground):


And then the toddler whine/scream started again, only this time it was accompanied by an older sister who was loudly complaining that someone was touching the thing that she'd been building and "Patch-What-Are-You-Doing-Stop-Right-Now?!?!?!"

On another day, trying to pull the rug out from under her.
Literally.
I glanced over to see that she had set up the nativity set and that Patch had absconded with one of the six camels in the house and a wise man (of which there are also six for that particular set since one of the sets went missing after our move north and I replaced it before finally finding the box that the original was in) and because I didn't move fast enough a chase ensued involving shouts of "Hey give that back!  Patch!!!!!!!" while I checked to make sure that February hadn't somehow snuck up on us and driven everyone completely out of their minds.

It must be the cold and the staying inside to stay snuggly warm.  

Finally I called Sadie over, while Patch grabbed the stable and tried to hold it out of her reach.  "Maybe you could let Patch could play with that wiseman and camel."  I started out lamely and then, seeing her expression, which clearly said why-would-I-want-to-play-with-him-when-he's-just-going-to-knock-everything-over, changed tactics.  Sure I could ask her to play with him but with the mood they were both in that wouldn't be fun for anybody.  So instead I said: "I think what you should really do is use the nativity to tell Patch the story of Jesus.  I'm not sure if Patch really knows about Jesus.  So maybe this is your big chance to tell someone about Jesus."

Patch is at a stage where he tends to respond to any attempts to tell him stories of any kind by a) running away or b) snoring and pretending to be asleep, so really I have no idea how much he's absorbed at this point.  If he's listened at all he should know the story but whether or not he's listened at all is highly questionable.

As I expected, Sadie picked up this new responsibility and ran with it.  Ten minutes later Patch was doing his best to escape from her by running around the living room while she followed him around saying things like: "Wait Patch!  I have to tell you what happened next!  The Wisemen went back to their own country... what was their country Mom?  But they were warned not to go back to King Herod to tell him where the baby was...  Patch, are you listening?  I need to tell you something!"

So there you have it.  One solution to a little brother who won't leave his big sister alone is to suggest that she teach him something... and if he's anything like Patch, watch him head in the opposite direction.

I do hope the weather warms up slightly (maybe not so much that the snow melts but enough so that my computer stops telling me it feelings like 0 or lower outside) before they start going completely and totally stir crazy.

3 comments:

  1. Is it bad that my first thought was, "oh thank the lord it's not just my kids!" ? lol

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  2. This is so funny! Poor Sadie! Wait until James and Patch become a dynamic duo of torturers (I have 5 brothers and no sisters! I know whereof I speak!) But that is still years off.
    I think you did a great job of redirect here, and Patch is probably thinking, "Mommy, you rat!" :-)

    God bless. ~ Bonnie

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