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Thursday, December 03, 2009

my kids are smarter than your kids


My daughter, BabyB, has determined that she can sleep on top of her bedspread, covered by a small blanket, and avoid making her bed in the morning.

And so, with this post, and with great pride, I hereby nominate BabyB as a candidate for the Nobel Laureate in Domestic Short Cuts.

And since there is a little known category called Family Laureates, The Curie family having won the most Nobel Prizes, with five, I will also nominate my son. He has discovered that, despite having a walk in closet, furnished with the usual array of clothes hangers, shelves and a string of hooks, he can organize his clothes better by laying them in discreet piles on his bedroom floor. Unfolded, even! That his mother nearly slipped a disc tripping over these piles on her way to open the window blinds is but a minor stumbling block of his revolutionary system.

BabyA comes in third place. She has devised a shoe organization scheme which may be too complex to describe in a short blog post. Her extraordinary design involves placing, or sliding, and sometimes kicking, her shoes, but most especially her slippers, under her bed where they wait, mismatched, until their partner shoe, or slipper, is put on the proper foot. How she does this has not been replicated by any other child scientists, or at least, a data base search has not yielded a similar reference. BabyA merely has to use the big toe of her unshod foot and slide it along the edge of her underbed, and, by a combination of tactile and sonar tracking, she locates the correct match. It's a spectacular process to behold!

Reader, does a child of yours have a Nobel-Prize-worthy discovery you'd like to nominate?



27 comments:

Mental P Mama said...

When did my children move into your house?

Kathleen Scott said...

So which side of the family do they take after?

Bed-making is overrated unless you have a big dirty dog sleeping with you.

Melissa said...

At least yours aren't working on a prize for Medicine. My younger son stashed his backpack in his room at the beginning of the summer. With a half eaten lunch in it. I had a lovely chat with whatever was growing in it before I threw it out.

snugglebug said...

BabyB... a girl after my own heart.

Rachel Cotterill said...

Genius! :)

I don't have kids, but I'm quite good at shortcuts myself, so heaven only knows what any offspring of mine would come up with!

Raj said...

LOL.. And I thought Home Alone overdid it. Maybe truth IS stranger than fiction. :D

Love your writing style.

Tammy said...

Hahaha! I got yelled at by my daughter one time because I picked clothes up off the floor to wash. Who knew those were the clean clothes?!!

Pretty Zesty said...

haha I so had that theory too when I was little!

Helena said...

I think I might start using BabyB's invention of sleeping on top of the bed spread so not having to make the bed in the mornings. I think it's brilliant!

I already use your son's "pile-style" for my clothes but it's because I've only got one small wardrobe and it's simply not big enough.

Lori P said...

Oh my gosh!! Flashbacks! I have one who will sleep wrapped in the comforter to avoid putting clean sheets on the bed. The same one leaves piles of folded clothes, despite having a walk-in closet. It's like a checker board. The other, well I've gone to wake her up in the morning and found Uggs in bed with her.

Tongue Trip said...

i got drawn to your blog by its mere title and then i had a perfect morning because you made me laugh and laugh a lot. your babies, all three, are adorable...yeah yeah i know about their uncanny propensity to disorganize or be disorganized..especially baby A and her unshod foot and the radar toe. :)

Jenn @ Juggling Life said...

My entire family has the most irritating ability to completely ignore the dog hair that accumulates on the floor daily.

I sweep every day--if I leave for a week it's like coming back to a dog hair tumbleweed.

Jocelyn said...

I have only a vaguely-formed thought, but it involves how my daughter stacks books by her bed in a fashion that can only be called "architectural." She's "building" and "constructing," you see...

LOVE the conceit of this post.

Harriet said...

When my daughter was 4 she discovered that she could save time in the morning by putting on her clothes for the next day at night. She would sleep in them, wake up, and ta-da! be ready for her day.

Jenn@ You know... that blog? said...

Gah, sad to say I sing the same song. My oldest daughter must have a floor, but I haven't seen it in quite some time. At one point I threatened to throw out any article of clothing I found on her floor (and btw, she has a big closet and 2 big, deep dressers plus an armoire, all EMPTY) but if I actually followed through she'd be going to school naked, and we both know it.

My youngest daughter took me seriously, so SHE sleeps under the HUUUUUGE mound of clothes and toys that she piles on top of her bed.

Ah well, at least I know she's not cold at night.

Margo said...

I'm pretty sure there is a cure for AIDS somewhere in Sparkle's closet :)

stephanie said...

I am getting OCD hives just reading about these methods. Not that my own children are remotely more advanced - my son is a genius at turning his bedroom floor into a LEGO metropolis, and my daughter is swallowed nightly by a bedfull of stuffed animals & pillows. And occasionally dirty clothes and a wayward jacket.

Seriously, I need to go breathe in a bag.

P.S. Do you get a million dollars for each of these winners of yours? :D

Mary said...

My children are outstandingly good at not putting away dirty plates, cutlery etc. They leave crockery trails around the house and I know it is from the goodness of their hearts. They just want me to know for sure where they have been.

Angels that they are!

Jan Holt said...

My brother got through 4 years of college without making his bed in the exact same way as BabyB. I think it's a kind of Darwinian survival of the fittest sort of thing. ;-) They will be around with plenty of spare time long after we are dinosaurs...

LOVE your blog!

Stacie said...

I'm sorry but David Blane can't do what Baby A is doing with the whole shoe thing! If a shoe goes missing in my house, especially under the bed, it has fallen into the orphaned shoe black hole from hell.

Fantastic Forrest said...

You make me feel a little better about my girl child.

Not much, but a little.

Thank you. :)

Madge said...

my children have devised a stress-situation stimulator. every morning before school we all run around the house looking in and under everything for belts and shoes and all of us screaming our heads off... it's genius

Reluctant Blogger said...

My son is amazing at looking scruffy whatever you do to him. If we are going to a wedding - I put him in his smart clothes when we arrive at the venue and there is no chance of him encountering food or mess before the service but even then he wears them in such a way that bits stick out where they should be tucked in and he slides on his butt on the floor just to get some nice streaks of dirt and then he tries to balance on the pews so that he gets the chance to fall off and rip something.

isabella mori said...

my daughter's evil plan is to ruin the linen industry. really, who needs bed sheets?

psychomom said...

I must nominate my teenager for some kind of award for being the biggest slob I've ever met (or am related to). If he has touched it, it's on the floor. And being an artist (a very absent-minded one), I can't count the number of times I have found black ink or red paint dried under a piece of clothing on the carpet. Grrrrr...

~annie said...

Whatever might be amiss, Critter didn't see, hear, smell or feel it. Her only functioning sense is taste, and even that is borderline.

Vodka Mom said...

Don't even go NEAR the beds in our house.