Whose Boy Is This Anyway?

Our VCR died. It was quite sudden, and very tragic. To grasp the full extent of this news you've gotta understand that we've allowed Micah's life to revolve around his movies.

Before you jump all over me for being that kind of mom, let me tell you that I have no excuse. I could tell you that he's the baby and we're too tired to fight the kids over such issues any longer. I could tell you that he's watching educational videos (hello, Blue! Thanks to you we now have a clue) and learning his alphabet and numbers, as well as how to take control of your own dreams. I could tell you that it's yet another form of speech therapy and that he's building his vocabulary and working on speech one yell and grunt at a time.

And while all the above are true, the sad fact is that we've learned to choose our battles. This was one that fell down so far in the ranks that we soon didn't care.

And if you give a mouse a cookie, he'll want some milk.

Our boy soon couldn't eat unless he was sitting on the floor in front of the television. He wouldn't join us at the dinner table, wouldn't sit with the kids at the counter for lunch, wouldn't even eat with us on the patio on warm evenings. And yet we allowed it. It was so worth it to not have yet another meltdown in the course of our day. He was happy, he was eating, he was memorizing entire movie scripts and increasing his gray matter by leaps and bounds.

And then the VCR broke. This was after the DVD player decided to go on the fritz a few weeks back. So you can only imagine the paramount tantrum we're now set up for.

It was a rough few days for all of us. I declared that I'd be buying another form of entertainment but in reality I forgot. And then something miraculous happened.

The boy played. All day. And never once begged for the television to be touched by an angel.

We're seriously loving the new kid that we found just under the surface of the TV. He now eats at the table with us. He plays with all of his toys. (And I do mean all. This makes for 20 minutes of extra cleaning at the end of the day, but it's worth it.) We're even expecting him to talk soon because you never can tell where miracles will stop.

He's been such a big helper for me with his newfound spare time. While we were gardening together he cut off the tops of my onions and dug up a tomato plant. He dug a hole and buried a green pepper with the dirt. He ran his truck right over my basil.

He loves housework just as much as gardening. He sprayed down the laundry room with the sink hose, unloaded a rack of the dirty dishwasher and (un)folded two loads of laundry.

He tried his hand at sewing as well. He carefully chose fabrics from the stash (tossing a whole shelf of inferior ones aside) and broke a needle while putting a hole in the dead center of a large piece of choice goods. He also decided to liven up my day by playing hide and seek with my mini scissors. I found them resting on the window ledge. I'm only glad he chose not to cut a hole in the screen.

Some days I'm not sure if I can handle all this domestic help. I hate to complain about it because we all know the day will be coming when he'll figure out that housework is to be regarded as a form of cruel and unusual punishment meant for only the worst offenders.

But I do wish that the other kids would have the desire to help out the way he does.

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The spaniels love them some puppies.