Old routines comfort Mom sometimes too...

     We always struggle a bit financially from January up until April because there are so many extra expenses at tax time, including our car insurance and tax for property, taxfor school, tags and inspection on my husband's car, getting taxes filed and paying our broker because we're both hopeless at that stuff. On top of that, we had a broken pipe last month that ran our water bill way up. All that in mind, James decided to ask for some overtime at work, which means that Jarod and I are spending alot more time home alone together. I knew right away what that meant, and I was prepared for it this time.

     You see, the last time James disrupted Jarod's world in this fashion, Jarod developed an adaptive routine just for this particular scenario.

     It began the same way every morning. Jarod would roll out of bed around 9 a.m., eat his breakfast, watch cartoons, snuggle with me for a couple of minutes, and then get right to work. He would start by pulling every book out of the bookshelf and slamming them loudly on the floor. Then it was off to the kitchen to see what he could filch from the knife drawer that would get me wound up enough to holler at him. When I wouldn't chase him, he would hand the knives to me and move on to the pots and pans. Those got the same treatment as the books. Then it was on to the bathroom to try and overflow the sink...This would go on all day, usually with just enough variance to keep old Mom a little off-balance, until finally he would be exhausted enough to want to sit down with me again. Then he would look up at me with his big, beautiful brown eyes and ask, "How do we make my Daddy come home?" A perfect, well thought out, coherent sentence from a child who usually can't be bothered with being verbal. Fabulous! He had systematically done each and every thing that drives his Dad insane in the hope that James would somehow magically appear to get onto him for it. None of it was intended for me at all. He was just trying to summon his Daddy. :) Awesome.