The Adventures of Captain Entropy!!!!

Captain Entropy is Cameron's superhero identity and his superpower is creating messes and chaos.  I've started thinking of his destroying and messing as "The Adventures of Captain Entropy."  I will sometimes just take out the camera and snap a picture, just for my own entertainment, because I have to get SOMETHING out of all my effort cleaning up after him, right? 

In a rare moment of attentiveness in a high school science class, I remember hearing entropy being described as the tendency of the universe toward disorder and chaos.  I also remember thinking that this could easily account for the condition of my room and I should really be sure to fill my mom in on that when I got home from school.   It's science, Mom.  Ya don't argue with science.  I'm quite sure that is not how the wicked smart folks who originally defined "entropy" intended the concept to be applied, but that potential application of the term gave me a chuckle at the time, caused me to actually remember something from high school science, and now it's getting me through toddlerhood.

Anyone who currently or ever has had a toddler can relate do the perpetual, thankless job of cleaning up the messes that a toddler creates.  It. Is.  MIND-NUMBING, and the only response is humor...the only response that doesn't result in me ending up in the loony bin, that is!  The chaos and mess that Cameron almost constantly creates threatens my ever-loving sanity.  I have never been a neat and tidy person. I have never been THAT GIRL who says, "OMIGOSH!  I'm like, SO TYPE-A/OCD! Everything has a place in my house and it must be tidy or I, like, go CRAZY!!!" and SECRETLY you know that behind the feigned disgust with herself, she actually takes pride in how tidy her house is.  Picking up, straightening, and organizing are loathsome and burdensome tasks to me, to be avoided at all costs, and Cameron causes me to have to spend more time doing these tasks in a single day than I would do in a week or even a MONTH pre-baby. Some days, I feel like I'm being punished for past dastardly deeds of disorganization. Another piece of learning from school which has stayed with me are the legends in Greek mythology in which folks who are sent to Hades, the underworld, are forced to perform tasks of perpetual failure as punishment for the bad things they did in their life.  The man who has to push a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down just inches before reaching the peak EVERY SINGLE TIME.  The parched man who lowers his lips to take a drink only to have the water dry up instantly.  That's how life feels sometimes, like I'm CONSTANTLY cleaning up messes that appear seemingly out of NOWHERE as punishment for the messes I created and/or ignored in the past. THAT ONE TASK which gives me no satisfaction is mine for all eternity, MWAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

 

 It's not just picking up his toys, I was prepared for that.  It's pulling the books off the shelves in the living room. It's dumping out the single sock bin as I'm trying to sort.  And my LEAST favorite of all, picking up random items he finds in other rooms of the house and dropping them in the living room. THE LIVING ROOM!!!  . It's not where our TV is, it's not where his toys are kept. The way our house is set up, you walk in the front door and there is our living room/dining room combo. There are WINDOWS INTO IT FROM THE FRONT PORCH for crying out loud. And yet this, THIS ONE ROOM WHOSE APPEARANCE ACTUALLY MATTERS, is his depository for whatever he's decided to toddle around with.  I'll clean it up during nap time and by the end of the day, it looks like Ariel's collection of random found objects in Disney's "The Little Mermaid." Whosits and whatsits GALORE, if you will.

OK, wait. I was wrong, that's not my least favorite.  My ACTUAL least favorite is when he's all up in my business, making already hated tasks that much more difficult.  For example, putting away his laundry. I can't do it when he's sleeping in his room, so I have to do it when he's awake AND keep him in the room with me so I can make sure he's not killing himself.  So, he pulls things off of hangers almost faster than I can hang them up.  He takes ALLTHEBOOKS out of his book bin.  He pulls ALLTHETOYS out of his toy bin.  And then when I'm done putting away his laundry, I go behind him and pick it all up.  He, of course, goes behind me and takes it out again and around and around we go until eventually, I get it all put away quickly enough that he doesn't have time to take it out again.  And don't even get me STARTED on the dishwasher.  That's an unmitigated disaster and I have been known to enlist them help of Elmo and Thomas the Tank Engine to get that done with no interference.

 

People say all the time, "As moms, we need to let our messes go." And they're right, and I do. What we are talking about here is on top of and above all of that.  You can only "let it go" for so long. And I'm also getting wise.  I've GREATLY pared down the number of books in the book bin in his room and completely removed the toy bin. Less to destroy means less to clean up.  We are also baby-proofing a lot of stuff, but we've hit some speed bumps there (our drawer latches keep falling off) and Jeff doesn't exactly come home from work SUPER EXCITED about trying AGAIN to fix THE SAME DANGED DRAWER.  I think he might be more excited about it if he were the one picking up the measuring spoons from the living room floor for the third time today- oops, did I say that out loud?  Hee hee hee. You get it though, right?

 

 Cam's also getting pretty close to that stage where he'll be able to help me with picking stuff up. Right now, he's still in the phase were he sees the purpose of setting anything up or putting anything away making it so you can of destroy it again.  Immediately. However, I think we are getting close and I'm looking forward to that time because actually using pick-up time to TEACH HIM SOMETHING will make it feel more like a step in the right direction and less like throwing deck chairs off of a sinking ship.

 

As in all aspects of life, humor and perspective are two of the best ways to get through parenting challenges.  In this situation, the perspective part for me is looking at this tendency toward disorder and chaos as the manifestation of how he processes the world.  He learns by doing right now.  He is fascinated by how stuff works and he wants to do for himself what he sees other people doing.

 

Why are my jammies hanging all together over there, what are they hanging on?  If I pull on them will they come down?  Hey, that was fun!  Let's do another one!!!

or

Why is mommy putting those shiny things in the big noisy silver machine with the racks?  Lemme take all the spoons out and see what she's doing with them...

 

 He also enjoys seeing his impact on things.  How the water splashes when he hits it, how the books are all off the shelves now that he's pulled them out.

 

Look, I can pull down ALLTHEBOOKS!  They are no longer on the shelves, AND I DID IT! ME!  I MOVED THEM ALL!!!!  Let's go find something else to move around!!!

 

Also, his interest in carrying objects around is a continuation of something he started when he was still crawling. Even then, he would pick up an object and examine it and then pack it around with him like our Yorkie used to do with a toy he liked. Except instead of carrying it in his mouth, he'd have it in one hand when he was crawling.  The result is that if the object was hard, it would tap on our laminate flooring and he'd sound like a peg-leg pirate crawling around, "Thump-click, thump-click." Same thing now, he explores an object and then rather than leave it, he carries it with him until he finds the next object of interest, at which time he drops it...somehow always in the living room. ALWAYS!

 

Perspective, thinking about WHY it's happening and what is says about where he is developmentally and about his personality, does help. But humor is necessary as well...enter CAPTAIN ENTROPY (dun-duh-duh-DUNNNNNNNNNNN)!!!

 

 

Around others, he is mild-mannered, easy-going toddler Mister Cameron.  When company leaves, however, he becomes CAPTAIN ENROPY (dun duh-duh DUNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!) PURVEYOR OF CHAOS AND CREATOR OF MESSES, PERPETUATOR OF THE UNIVERSE'S TENDENCY TOWARD DISORDER!  Faster than a cleaning Mommy, able to destroy entire bookshelves in a single motion of his pudgy wittle arm, toddling to the living room with the most random objects imaginable.

 

So, I leave you with this.  A few recent snapshots of The Adventures of Captain Entropy.  Who, fortunately for all of us, has the additional superpower of being ridiculously adorable.