Cereal and Toilets

I was trying to take a nap when I heard my wife scream.

I didn't jump up off the couch or anything to see what was going on. Screaming at nap time is pretty normal.

Usually you'll hear her scream because at some point during their play time together, Jack has grabbed a handful of Luke's hair and pulled him to the floor. Jack laughs. Luke cries. My wife screams.

Sometimes you hear it when, at some point during their play time together, Luke's arm inadvertently passes through Ben's play space. That's when Ben leans over and bites Luke so hard that he leaves a circular imprint of teeth on Luke's skin. Kind of looks like a little tiny dog bite.

Ben plays. Luke cries. My wife screams.

This time, though, the screaming had much more to do with the boys' newfound mobility. They've been walking for several months, and even running for a few of those months.

But now, they're into climbing. And beyond the earlier references I've made to the gender differences we discovered in the diaper changing process, the climbing has made it clear to us that boys and girls are different.

I just don't remember the girls struggling to get up on the couch. When they were big enough, and strong enough, and when they cared enough, they just hiked themselves up there. The boys, on the other hand, have been struggling for months to hoist themselves onto the couch for the sole purpose, apparently, of flinging themselves off the couch back to the floor.

They are so determined to climb that lately they've begun to build makeshift ladders. Luke prefers to use a plastic rocking horse as a staircase. And he has learned the hard way the risks of using an object that is built to rock back and forth as his support mechanism.

Just before Thanksgiving, Ben climbed up on a chair in the living room so he could flip the light and ceiling fan switches about four thousand more times. At some point during the flipping, he lost his balance, fell off the chair, and smacked the bridge of his nose on the arm of the chair on his way down.

Double-barrel nosebleed. Broken nose. Purplish-green bruise mask for Thanksgiving. Nice, Ben.

During my nap, though, the boys conspired in a new adventure. See, they're tall enough now that simply closing the doors in our house won't keep them out of rooms we don't want them in. They just get up on their tip-toes, stretch as far as they can reach, and open the door.

And now, there is no space in our house that is safe. During my nap, they pulled open the pantry door, climbed up the shelves, pulled down all the cereal boxes, and dumped piles of cereal on the floor. Cereal which they then, of course, ate. They would not eat it if they were sitting at the dinner table. But off of the floor? You bet.

The wax would have blown out of my ears if I'd opened the pantry door to see three 18-month-old boys sitting in piles of cereal and eating it off the floor. My wife screamed. And then took a picture.

Later that same afternoon, the boys pushed open the door to the bathroom (a realm that had been, up to this point, strictly off limits, because of their tendency to close each others' heads in the toilet seat, or to stir the toilet water with their arms), climbed up on the toilet and dumped a recently watered plant onto the floor.

This time when my wife ran to the bathroom to see what hell the triplets had wrought, she found an ecosystem of flowing black potting soil, a child with his sleeves soaked up to his armpits, and six blue eyes staring at her as though Elliot Ness had just shot the lock off the door.

She screamed. And then took a picture.

I just rolled over and went back to sleep.

Sometimes it's better just to pretend that you didn't hear it.