Thursday, November 02, 2006

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree

On Tuesday, my daughter made a mess.

Stuart has been a bit fussy lately, for quite legitimate reasons: teething, stuffy nose, fever. Tory too has been sick recently, and is perhaps a tad more needy since the arrival of a sib. Perfectly normal. On Tuesday, Stuart was finally going down for his first good nap of the day, and Johanna heard Tory playing in the bathroom sink. Not alarmed, Johanna thought to herself, "Thank you, Tory. Thank you for entertaining yourself for a few minutes so I can get your brother to sleep."

Tory comes into the living room.
"I want you to read me a book."
"OK Baby. Let me get Stuart into the sling."

Johanna hears a noise. "What is that tinkling sound?" Johanna looks around the corner at the bathroom.

"Oh my God." The sink is overflowing.

"Oh my God!" There is a lot of water on the floor.

"Oh my God!!!" There would be more water on the floor, except that it is running down the hot air vent.

Stuart does not sleep through this, is rather unhappy about that fact, and lets everyone know. Tory is perhaps taken aback by the loss of her mother's sanity. Johanna turns off both faucets, and decides the towels needed to be washed anyway, but thinks to herself that there are easier ways to mop the floor. Finally she goes downstairs with an armload of wet towels to discover water has also dripped through the ceiling, onto the couch, the floor, and some boxes. She loses a bit more of her mind.

One of our wonderful neighbors told us later, "That is when you bring Tory over and say 'I need you to watch her for a bit so that she makes it through the day.'"

My mom was less impressed. "I had to replace the upstairs bathroom floor twice because of you, and I don't know how many times we had to patch the ceiling. It was never Elena. Just you."

1 comment:

phil said...

I feel guilty at laughing at this. I know the damage is not fun to deal with. But your mom's comments struck me as funny. It sounds like my father taking glee in my siblings' problems with their children that are so much like the problems they caused him.