Saturday, June 26, 2010

The Second Law of Thermodynamics...

...is true. My house proves it. If I do not regularly go around and straighten up, putting things away, and bringing order to it, it quickly degenerates into chaos. Twenty-four hours without "redding up" can bring disorder to every single room of the house, it seems. It's amazing, in a very disheartening sort of way. Sigh.

My observation of this Second Law of Thermodynamics at work in my house came into clear focus this evening when we got a phone call about 6:00 PM from some friends asking if they could come over around 9:00 PM. Of course, they could; we'd be delighted to have them! At that point, as I looked around at our stuff scattered every which way, I had two choices: stick with Plan A and go to our local lawn party with the family as planned and then do a quick (extremely quick) clean-up of the living areas when we got home or switch to Plan B and stay home from the lawn party to clean up the house. I went with Plan A. To paraphrase something Jeff said tonight, "No one ever gets to the end of their life and says, 'I wish I would have cleaned more'."

Anyway, I'm not going to post pictures tonight of the messes that suddenly spring up every time I turn my back. Instead, here's a video I took yesterday afternoon while Tobin was having his nap.


The noise in the video is coming from the train, a battery-operated one that rolls along by itself. In this case, Tobin had turned it on and was holding it in his hand when he fell asleep. The noise and vibration obviously didn't bother him...and neither did the fact that he had a hard plastic dinosaur resting on his face. I'm not at all sure I could sleep like that; but what can I say, he's a boy of many talents.

The next time I think to myself that I'd like to sleep like a baby, I'll change the phrase to...

..."sleep like a Tobin!" :)

4 comments:

Sally said...

I'm impressed that you get around to redding up once every 24 hours! I wish I could say the same. However, I implemented a new program a little while back. I give Paul and Hannah each a job (pick up all the legos, pick up all the softies, pick up all the plastic food, etc.), and when the task is done, they get a treat (a small tootsie roll, a candy heart left from Valentine's day, 2 M & M's, or something like that). Boy, that usually gets the job done in a hurry, and then they enjoy having more space to play with something else. It also usually keeps me from having to "nag" them to stick with the task.

Jolanthe said...

That video of Tobin sleeping is hilarious! It amazes me what kids can sleep though. Kaleb was up one night playing, lights on in the room, banging the wall and Zachary was just out cold.

As a mom it's probably good that I don't sleep that hard! I had girls I went to college with who slept through the fire alarms.

Leah said...

Sleep like a Tobin indeed! But sleep like a baby? You mean you want to wet yourself and wake up every other hour crying because you're hungry? I never did understand that expression! : )

Margie said...

I especially love the dinosaur on his head.