Monday, January 21, 2008

Paranoid?

Today the house was quiet.

Too quiet.

I knew that meant trouble.

Oldest Daughter said, "You are so paranoid. WHY do you think it automatically means Demon Baby is getting into trouble?"

"Umm . . . because I carried him for nine months, gave birth to him, have been raising him his entire Demon Life, and I KNOW him."

Of course, silence meant he had dragged a chair to the candy stash, taken gum drops upstairs, and found creative uses for them, mostly having to do with designs in the carpet.

Just now, the Mom Eyes In The Back Of My Head felt he was in trouble just behind me.

"What are you doing?" I called out over my shoulder as I worked on my new novel.

"I'm not doing something."

"That form of denial usually means you ARE doing something."

"I'm not!"

I will spare you the details of what my kitchen looks like right now.

Paranoid? Or psychic. Or simply Mother of the Most Mischievous Boy Ever. You be the judge.

6 comments:

Aimlesswriter said...

Just had to check in on the latest Demon Baby antics. lol
I had a child I was afraid to turn my back on, too. She was always into something. Once, while I folded clothes in the bedroom she went into the kitchen, pushed a chair to the counter, dumped the dish drainer into the sink, climbed up to reach the top shelf in the corner cabinet and downed a bottle of cold medicine. I can still hear the woman's voice from Poisen Control say, "Don't panic, she is toxic."
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Erica Orloff said...

Aimless:
Sounds like Demon. He believs the SOLE purpose of having a balcony landing on the second floor is to see the trajectory of bottles of syrup, Christmas ornaments, jewlery . . . anything and everything he can throw over to the oak floors below.

E

Jude Hardin said...

Well, it is really cool to drop things from high places. David Letterman used to have an ongoing segment involving that.

One of my favorite first lines for a novel (can't remember where I read it) goes something like...He came crashing through a window on the sixth floor, and his body hit the pavement like a plastic garbage bag full of alphabet soup. Ouch!

Erica Orloff said...

Jude:
I KNOW!! I love that Letterman segment. I think Demon may be a late-night talk show host in the making. Think about it. The Syrup Segment. The Throw Things Off the Roof Segment. He's got all these great ideas.

E

The Muse said...

Hi Erica,

Great post. BOYS?!? We have a balcony in our house as well. This must be a universal game for kids. My son is always dropping stuff with his friends from the balcony. (Of course, he probably got the idea from me; I often use it as a laundry chute.) One time when I was in an adjoining room I came out to check on my son and his friends because, as you say, it was MUCH too quiet. They had decided that they were going to climb on the backside of the stairs to the balcony and leap from the second story landing onto the sofas below. OMG!!! Needless to say, that friend was sent home and the party was over. When my son was a toddler I was always terrified that he'd decide that it would be a neat thing to drop my precious, little Yorkshire Terrier, Trinket, over the landing to see him splat on the marble floors below. I think that my Yorkie sensed this too, because he would not go near my son...

Erica Orloff said...

Muse:
LOL! My dogs avoid my son, too. He thinks their ears are handles.

E