I was in a lunch meeting with Erica and another colleague yesterday, when somehow in the conversation I mentioned something about my husband creating a spreadsheet to manage some aspect of our household. Knowing my flair for detail and having received many of my spreadsheets, our lunch guest looked surprised that I was married to someone as organized as me.
Erica proceeded to tell him how Mr. Org and I are super similar, how we are mega planners, how we both love to have all of our ducks in a row AND how fate has blessed us with a child who is a big ball of energy, who is all over the place, and who is very impulsive. Kinda ironic. Yep, I know.
Parenting is challenging. Any parent knows to expect the unexpected with kids and that even the best laid plans can go awry when kids are part of the equation. But some kids take it to the next level and my son is one of them. It is pretty funny, challenging and healthy for me that so much of my son’s nature pushes me out of my comfort zone and forces me to give up some control. And the fact that my hubby and I are very organized is good for the Kid, too. For an almost 5yr old who has a hard time reining it in, some imposed structure can really help.
But every so often I get glimpses of him catching the organizing bug and my heart soars! He’s getting better at properly tidying his toys and sometimes he even initiates it himself. When we had our folks over a couple of weeks ago and he chastised them for not putting their shoes in the right spot, I was kinda embarrassed but oh so proud!
And then, the other day, we walked into the living room and he had set this up:
He very carefully arranged some of his favourite Hot Wheels into this beautiful line up. He’s very passionate about his vehicles and knows intimate details about each and every one of them. When we asked him about what he had done, he told us that they were set in order by speed, fastest at one end and then all the way down to slowest at the other. Note that the photos above are taken from opposite ends, with the Le Mans racer being the fastest and the trailer being the slowest. (Of course, as a trailer has no engine!)
It reminded me of the stories I heard about my hubby and his brother when they were little – how they set up ramps to send their cars down so they could record which ones went faster than others on charts that they created.
Maybe the Kid has a little chip of the old organizing block in him after all!
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