He has places to go and things to do.

***

I would like to take a few minutes to tell some Seth stories.  Seth is five years old and as smart as a whip.  Unfortunately, his brilliance is not tempered with common sense quite yet, so we have adventures with him on a regular basis.  Over the last week, I have had several close calls with him that I want to record.

Tale Number One:  Sock Monkey

Last week,  I was upstairs giving Sarah a bath and Seth was playing like an angel downstairs (or, so I thought).  As Sarah was playing in the water, I came to the realization that I had heard the downstairs bathroom flush.  It flushed, and flushed again.  After about five or six consecutive flushes I ran down to see what the matter was.  I found Seth in there, intent on flushing – with the water in the sink running, too.  I looked down into the toilet and realized that he was trying to flush down a stuffed animal.

“Seth!  What are you doing?”

“It’s my sock monkey.  I don’t like it anymore so I want it to go to the ocean, and drown.”  he explained.

“Whaaaaaa?  What do you mean you don’t like your sock monkey?”  I was astounded.  He doesn’t normally flush the things he doesn’t like down the toilet.  I turned the water off in the sink but I wasn’t about to put my hand in the toilet.

“Seth, you put it in there, you reach your hand in and get it out!” I demanded.

“Whaaaaaaa?”  He complained.

“The water is clean enough, go ahead, pull it out!”

He reached his hand down into the water and pulled out…….just an arm!  I quickly realized that the arm was charred!

I screamed.  “Seth!  Did you burn your monkey?  You DID!  You tried to BURN YOUR MONKEY!”

As I was exclaiming, he reached down and pulled out the rest of it.  I screamed again.   His monkey was all burned up and he had tried to flush it down the toilet so I would never know.  Apparently he had gotten it in the fire (we don’t know why, I don’t know why, and Seth doesn’t know why either) and when it was in flames, he carried it to the bathroom with the fireplace tongs and threw it in the toilet.  We had a talk about fire safety but I could tell that he really wasn’t that bothered by the experience.  He was mostly upset because I was upset with him, not because he could have burned himself or the house down.

To make things even more interesting, the entire time I was dealing with him, Sarah was up in the tub calling, “MOM!!!  I’M READY TO GET OUT!” over and over………..

*****

Tale Number Two:  The non-Emergency Call

This morning I came out of my room and heard Seth upstairs in his bed talking away, having a good old conversation.  “Who in the world is Seth talking to?”  I asked Sarah.  “He has Caleb’s phone.” she answered.  Okay.  I walked on into the kitchen, believing that he was just having a pretend conversation.  Rich had thrilled Caleb’s heart by giving him his old disconnected but still working blackberry.  Caleb could play the ringtones and push the buttons.  I think he could even play a little game on it.

After a minute or so, Seth came down and said, “Here, he wants to talk to you.”

“Whaaaaaa?”  I was thinking.

Guess what?  When a blackberry is disconnected you can STILL CALL 911!  Yep, all that time Seth was upstairs having an animated heart to heart with an emergency phone service worker.  The man asked Seth if he could help him and Seth said “no”.  (He didn’t need help, he just needed someone to talk to.)  He asked Seth if there was an emergency.  “No”.  Seth replied.  They hung up.  Seth wasn’t done, so he called him back.  He wanted to tell the nice man (Seth knew he was nice, after all-he had *offered to help*) that he got a new calendar and that he had a birthday and mom’s birthday was tomorrow.  He wanted to tell the man some stories.  He wanted to know if he could go to his house sometime.  At this point, the man asked if he could speak to a grown up.

“Yes, we received several phone calls from this number.  I guess your son got a hold of your phone.  It’s good that he gave it back to you so we knew there wasn’t an emergency.”

I got off the phone and marched it back to my husband.  It’s not going to be a toy anymore.

Seth getting into cookies.

Seth’s self photography

Me and Seth (truly, for all his mischief, he’s the apple of my eye)

If the mother doesn’t keep the little boy busy, he will find something to do.