Patience

By royal decree of the Mommy, TV at our house is a luxury reserved solely for the basement - where the sounds of my yelling at Tim McCarver and Joe Buck can be moderately muffled. For the last week or so, however, we've been watching it upstairs. The moldy smell in the basement carpet had ultimately become too much to bear and we had to move the whole operation up to the living room. As of last Thursday, we had officially been waiting a month for the new carpet to be delivered and installed.

Why is it taking so long? It could have been installed the next day if we had gone with our first (very affordable) quote from a big box store, but when you have a chance to spend an extra few hundred dollars and wait an extra three weeks by going with the little guy, I don't know about you but I take it!

While this is apparently the price you pay for supporting the small businessman, it is also a good exercise in patience. Another good exercise in patience? Olympic figure skating. I mean, really?

It's a good thing we have all of these opportunities to practice, because we're needing to apply our new patience skills with increasing regularity. Part of growing up - I've been told - is learning how to do things yourself. Who knew that learning how to walk up and down the stairs would take an hour? Every day. Each way. Don't even talk to me about how long it takes our little pupil to get dressed/undressed in the morning. He'd much prefer to pull every book off of every shelf in our house over putting on his socks.

And who can blame him, really? Socks are annoying.

To help facilitate these sorts of things - and to avoid the inevitable tantrum that kicks in if you try to force the issue - we've started mimicking daycare practices and giving Finn the 2-minute warning. Time to put the toys away? 2-minutes. Time to leave the toy cars at the drugstore? 2-minutes.

No threats, just the 2-minute warning, then follow-through. Kitty's much better at applying this approach consistently, but I'm trying. Luckily Finn has no idea how long 2-minutes are, so I can kind of fudge it if my beer is getting warm.

Unfortunately, it turns out the 2-minute warning goes both ways. The other day, before the TV was in the living room, Finn wanted to go downstairs to watch ElmoBigBird. Kitty was busy in the kitchen and told him he had to wait until she was done. His response?

Yup. "Two minutes."

Sometimes, apparently, learning can happen quickly. Well played, boy. Well played.

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In the pic above, Finn is noting that while he is wearing a Mariners hat - since the Mariners team store weirdly doesn't stock children's Yankees hats - his true loyalties lie with the pinstripes. At least that's what I will assume he's noting until such time that he can articulate an alternative.

At which point, he'll be kicked out of the house.