Yesterday, I went for a walk with Thing One (we call our three-year-old son Thing One because of his love of The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss. His baby brother is Thing Two). The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.
As we walked we saw a big Cabbage White butterfly fluttering in a front garden. Thing One stopped, his little face lit up with wonder.
"Look Mummy!" he shouted. "A buffertye!"
He looked so sweet, gazing at the butterfly and trying hard to get the word right, that my heart ached with love for him.
Then he picked up a stick.
"Let's kill it!" he yelled. "Aaaaaaaargh!"
And so welcome to the world of a three-year-old boy. Destruction, mainly.
We can spend an hour putting together his (very complicated, by the way, although somehow Daddy finds it easy) train set. Then I'll turn my back for a second and it's in pieces once more. Even his favourite toys don't escape. As I write, Buzz Lightyear is lying at my feet, facedown on the carpet, his helmet discarded and his wings wobbly. He even takes apart his lunch; peeling the pastry from sausage rolls and the filling from sandwiches.
I guess it's part of learning how the world works. He wants to know how things fit together so he takes them apart. Violently.
It's interesting also, that possibly it's a gender thing. Men seem to have a primal urge to take things to pieces and apparently it starts early. I, on the other hand, would rather things stayed as they are.
I guess it's just another thing to get used to, living as I do, with one man and two little boys. And so I resign myself to picking up bits of train track. It'll be worth it in the end when Thing One and Thing Two are older and can mend stuff!
