Parenting

Every parent has one. A toy that magically turns on, on its own.

How it turns on is a mystery. You know you turned it off but somehow it’s flashing or making noise.

Your kids are nowhere in sight and have not been around the toy but yet somehow its on.

And it stays on.

Of course I’ll take your old baby and toddler toys.

Parents have no problem accepting freebies as their kids age. You never say no to free stuff. Especially toys.

Meet Bob The Builders Counting Hammer. This is my toy.

When Bob is not asking if you can build something he makes a ticking sound even when he’s turned off. There have been at least 6 times in the two years we have owned it that I’ve walked into a dead quiet room only to hear a faint ticking sound.

I feel like Captain Hook and his clock paranoia when the ticking sound is going off.

Twice it started ticking in the box of toys in our family room, once in my sons room, and twice in the basement. The creepiest of them all happened when I went into the basement to feed the cats one evening and turned on half the basement lights. Our basement is not creepy and even with half the lights on it is well light.

Making the 6 foot journey to the steps heading upstairs from the cat dish I paused to make sure there was nothing else that needed to be done. Silence over took the entire basement. That is until from the other side of the basement I heard “Can we build it? Yes we can.”

Bob The Builders Counting Hammer was alive.

There was nobody else in the basement. There were enough lights on to not give you the heebie jeebies.

I walked over to where Bob was and sure enough the hammer was ticking all while being off. Truly a unique piece of plastic it is. Defies all that is real.

Toy Story comes to mind when I see that hammer laying around our house. My son does not play with it that much anymore and I think he was mad when we yelled at him for hitting his sister in the head with it.

The toy hammer is going to be heading to Craigslist in the next bundle of toys we try to sell. I wonder if it will continue to wonder its next owner with the ability to turn on by itself. Here is a video of what Bob The Builders Counting Hammer can do. Exciting!

Do you have a toy like this in your house?

It should be noted we gave away this toy in 2018. Its haunting some other house in Oakland County, MI now.

Since becoming a parent three and a half years ago I have had a number of people tell me I must be busy with our two kids. I understand why people say it. Babies, infants, and toddlers demand a lot of your energy.

The other night Andrea and I were talking about the kids and other events that have happened since becoming parents. When we started to talk about the kids and being busy because of them, I said I didn’t feel busy. I felt unbusy.

There is a “unbusy movement” going on in the world of minimalists. Basically, people are paring down their lives by removing clutter, reducing expenses, and others. I am a fan of this movement.

But when I thought about being busy with kids I could not relate it to times in my life when I knew I was busy. Like at work calling people, responding to emails, making sales, etc. While all of those things were apart of my job I felt a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.

Or when I was at college juggling classes, the occasional job, sports, studying, and a full social calendar. There were no down days and it was awesome.

I feel none of those with kids. Especially babies, infants, and toddlers.

My best guess is I feel unbusy because for the first time in my life I am not doing something for me. For the last three years I have been doing things for two people incapable of doing anything for themselves.

While I do not feel busy, I know at any moment one of them will need me for a minute here or ten minutes there. Forcing me to drop everything I am doing at that moment to take care of the situation only to wait for it to happen again. Its the “Hurry Up and Wait” analogy people in the Military say.

There is no reward.

There is no accomplishment.

There is no clocking out.

You are constantly unbusy as a parent to very young kids. It doesn’t make sense, but its a thing. Well, its my thing.

**An example of being unbusy as a parent happened thirty seconds after typing what I thought would be the last sentence above. I added what happened below the next day.**

As I finished typing on the computer in my basement, me and my two year old daughter were making our way upstairs for dinner.

She was half way up the stairs when she missed the railing, lost her balance, and instead of falling forward into the steps she freaked out and fell backward down the steps.

Thankfully (for lack of better word) she was on the fifth step and not at the top. Her arm took the brunt force of the hit from the second to last step above the basement floor. She bounced off the step in a spinning like fashion and her butt hit the floor absorbing the remaining force. She broke out in tears and I went into high alert. I was four feet away and could do nothing.

Even though both of my kids have gone up and down the steps on their own a hundred times, it is the second time I have seen one fall down the basement steps. The first time was pretty bad.

My now three year old was two when he misstepped from the very top and somersaulted all the way down (thankfully) bouncing off that second to last step with his shoulder which kept his head from hitting the basement floor.

He was ok, but Ill never forget seeing him tumble down the steps head over heels four feet away and not being able to do anything about it.

Back to my daughter. She was ok, but for the next twenty minutes I held her in my arms consoling her. Unbusy.