The Wrath of John

John and I have been having a few weeks of misunderstandings.  I attribute this to sleep deprivation due to late nights with the Olympics.  Frankly, this could apply to both of us, but I meant it about John.  It is not impossible to force a child to go to bed before his siblings/roommates...but, by 8 PM, I'm too tired to force the issue.  As such, our three year old stayed up until 9 most nights (later on a couple, much, much earlier on a few) before succumbing to sleep snuggled up against a parent or sibling on the couch.  For the record, that sleep scenario could also apply to his mother...just swap out parent for husband and sibling for child...But, I digress.

As a result of this sleep deprivation, patience on my part and willingness to obey on his part were pretty slim.  It finally came to a head on Monday of this week.  He had taken some matters into his own hand after I had repeatedly said no.  In this case, it was playing with a chemistry set that he got out on his own.  I allowed this as it was age appropriate for him (no glass or actual chemicals), but he had to clean it all up before leaving the area.  That proved to be a bridge too far.  After a bout of screaming heads, I banished him to his room to 'chill out'.  He stomped all the way up the stairs, slammed the door a few times, and caused some other loud noises for a time, but eventually fell into silence.  And the rest of us had about a half hour to complete schoolwork without interruption.

In the past, John has fallen asleep after such an episode.  Will was the same way.  I half thought this might be the case, but when he appeared 45 minutes later contrite and willing to let bygones be bygones, we hugged it out and he was ready to do as I requested.  We spent the rest of the morning doing some experiments (will it float?), and making cookies with Molly and Will.

As John and I were finishing up the cookies, Dom retired to their shared room to take a brief break from his rigorous morning studies.  He was up there about a minute when he politely requested the presence of John and Molly.  It is at this point that John immediately turns to me and says:

"When I was angry, I threw them on the floor.  All of them"

It took me a few seconds, but I quickly did an inventory of the boys' shared room: Lego Creations

I ran to the room where Dom was still politely waiting for the usual suspects expecting to see extensive damage from Hurricane John.  Turns out our little three year old had taken his frustration out on a Ninjago Lego set and a bunch of sets of directions.   Think of the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz after the flying monkeys take him apart.  There were pieces everywhere.  To be honest, I had to hide a smile as I imagined what the scene must have looked like.  Little John furiously throwing the lego around until it was smashed into all of its hundreds of pieces.

The one saving grace was that it was a Lego set that Dom had put together and not Will.  Dom is a bit more forgiving when it comes to these things (though Will has a huge soft spot for John).  Now, if it had been his sports logo collection...we might have another situation. It was also, luckily, one of the smaller Lego sets...not the Hogwarts Castle or Millenium Falcon.  John might have been blind with fury...but he isn't a fool.

The fool is the mother that sent her raging three year old to a room filled with Legos.  Won't make that mistake again.  Soon anyway.