Collector

Cindy has a large jungle gym in her back yard. Now that the weather is finally nice, the kids spend a good part of their day clambering around on it. The structure sits on a bed of gravel, which is an attraction in and of itself - what is it about little stones that makes kids want to play with them, throw them, pile them up on the bottom of the slide just when someone else is trying to use it?

It all started innocuously enough a few weeks ago when I started to find a stray pebble or two around the house. There would be one on the mudroom floor. Easy enough to explain away; it must have been tracked in. Then there was a strange clanking noise in the washing machine, which turned out to be another little stone on the spin cycle. Little by little, the stones began increasing in number. And when I got to Cindy's house at the end of each day, I started to notice that Liam's pockets were weighed down. Cindy noticed too; she started giving me the heads up when she saw Liam picking up these stones (presumably to keep my washer safe!)

Now we are at the point where Liam comes home with his pockets crammed full every single day. He comes into the kitchen while I make dinner and asks for a bowl of water. He washes them all off very carefully; I think he likes to see the colour change when they get wet. Then he dries them - he uses my good hand towels from the powder room and my slightlly-less-good tea towels from the kitchen for this, and the only consolation I have is that at least we're keeping some paper towels out of the landfill - and they get put away in a tin box that he keeps on a bookshelf in his bedroom.

(On a completely unrelated note, this reminds me that we have never really gotten around to decorating his bedroom. We need to get on that. Some junk got unpacked and thrown on his shelves, but it needs to be edited, some art needs to be hung, and a new dresser needs to be found. Duly noted.)

Yesterday, Cindy needed to take an emergency day off and Gramma watched the kids, and apparently Liam entertained Gramma (himself?) for hours by hiding his stone collection around the house and then letting her go on a treasure hunt to find them all. I have a feeling we will be finding pebbles here and there for weeks to come. Not that Gramma isn't a good finder, but there was a lot to find. The tin box looks a little empty since the last time I saw it. Some more scavenging is in order.