Good Grief

Today I was washing dishes (because the most fun thing you can do after a long day at work is clean up your kitchen). Eamon was amusing himself with some Mountain Dew bottles and all was well in the Land of Wolfe.

I heard a little giggle. This seemed strange, because Mountain Dew bottles, in my opinion, are not inherently funny.

I turned around.

Eamon had stopped playing with the Mountain Dew bottles and had moved on to splashing the water from the dog's water bowl everywhere.

In our house, this is a no no. I reminded Eamon.

He looked straight at me. He smiled. He put his hands back in the water and splashed.

What could I do? I had to put him in time out, of course, in a corner by the cupboards. I faced him away from me and the rest of the kitchen.

There was another Mountain Dew bottle under the cupboard. He reached for it and started playing. I took it away.

There was a colander within his reach (I hadn't gotten to the tidying up the floor yet, okay?). We both saw it at the same time and lunged. I grabbed it first and put it away.

He started kicking his shoes on the cupboard in a happy little jig. I told him to stop.

He turned, just a bit, and looked at me and smiled. I looked away and went back to washing dishes to show him I would not be drawn in. I was the Mommy of Steel.

So instead he reached for the hinges on the cupboard to play with those.

We finished the timeout with me standing directly behind him, staring at the back of his head, making a weird sort of loud, angry buzzer noise whenever he reached for something or attempted to have too much fun during timeout.

The entire process only lasted about 2 minutes.

And those of you out there who know Aaron Wolfe well, or knew him and his contrariness as a child, are just laughing right now, aren't you?

Uh huh.