We're Movietrapped!

Ben has been super cranky lately, so I figured it was time for a little drastic one on one.  Drastic for ME, meaning that I needed to let the dirty dishes and the unfolded laundry sit where they were and instead get down on the floor and play with my buddy.  It's amazing how hard that is to do when you're a Queen of Multitasking!  There's a poem about babies not keeping that's so true and precious... Wait!  I found it!

Babies Don’t Keep

by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,

Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,

Hang out the washing, make up the bed,

Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?

She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,

Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due

Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew

And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo

But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo

Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?

Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow

But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!

I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

It really is a poignant poem, but when the maple syrup on the floor threatens to suck my shoe right off, and the dust bunnies look like they might overtake me, and the clutter and chaos start to take away my grasp on reality...it's near impossible to stop and smell the roses, or in this case, stop and let my booger-faced two year old take the lead at play time with my undivided attention. 

But sometimes you've got to suck it up and let those dust bunnies lie.

So when Ben found Marc's spiffy stud finder in the garage after we'd put the big kids on the bus, and he determined that it was a "spy gadget", I let him lead us on a mission all around the house.  We were hiding behind the sofa, crawling through the play room, finding spy gadgets and bad guys all along the way - it was hilarious!  I'm surprised at how well he can whisper when he's so inclined - and his imagination is tireless.

When the back of one of his toy trucks popped open,  I told him the bad guys must have booby-trapped it.  He used his spy gadget to check it out all over and proclaimed;

"Yep!  That's it!  We're movie-trapped!"

Jack used to mis-pronounce the same word at this age - "booney-trapped" he called it.  And now he spends his day learning cursive and beginning division and daydreaming out the window of all the booney-traps he can make at recess with his buddies.

So Ruth and her poem, even if they put a crimp in my housework plans, are absolutely right.  Babies don't keep.   And I think I'm going to give myself a mandatory half hour of "on the floor with Ben" time each morning to make sure I enjoy him while the opportunity is here.