Coal

Let's just say that on this particular day, we had had a day. David dumped out 3 bottles of shampoo during his bath, and during mine he found the circuit breaker box, a laundry basket to reach it, and flipped more than half of the switches before my lights went out in the bathroom. (The instant the lights went off, I knew exactly what caused it. It was one of those intuitive mother moments. I tried playing out other scenarios in my mind, like power failure due to high winds. But I instinctively knew that it was David's curiosity that left me in the soapy dark.)

Then he decided to do a few things he learned from reading the children's books by David Shannon--like empty a whole roll of TP, empty all of his drawers, climb to the highest point in the kitchen to look for cookies, etc. (These books are about a little boy that gets in a lot of trouble. I thought they would be good conversation pieces for my son, so he could see someone else getting in trouble, and he could be the one to remind the little boy to make good choices. It totally backfired. The books just gave him more ideas. It probably doesn't help that the little boy's name in the book was David.)

Being just a few days before Christmas, I started thinking about the song "I'm getting nothing for Christmas." NOT because David is so awfully naughty, but just because I began to wonder if the mother of a very curious and somewhat mischievous boy wasn't the one to write the lyrics.

I also start wondering if we shouldn't have emphasized the whole thing with Santa "who sees you when you're sleeping" a little more. And that whole thing about naughty and nice, presents versus coal.

Then the doorbell rang. It was our postal carrier. He had a delivery of seven huge, heavy boxes for us. I was caught off guard, because I wasn't expecting any more shipments--we had received Christmas boxes from both sides of the family, and I couldn't imagine what this delivery was all about. But being around Christmas, I accepted the boxes. It took only a few minutes to dawn on me that the order I had placed with the post office for 7 flat rate boxes to be delivered (placed in November, so long forgotten) had somehow turned in to 7 cases of flat rate boxes. I was looking for a particular size--their largest--and every post office lobby we stopped at were out of them. So I used their online services and ordered the empty boxes for delivery. Instead of boxes, we received boxes of boxes. Boxes of empty boxes to be exact.

In light of the morning we had already had, I wondered if maybe boxes of empty boxes is the modern day version of "coal"? 

It made me chuckle.

In pure David style, he took the would-be-coal and made it fun. Until we summoned the mailman back to pick up the cases of boxes, David had fun with slides, forts, stacking, and declaring "I'm a strong boy, mom!"

  

Yes, David,

A strong boy.

And  a strong spirit.