Little Bo Peep

One aspect I did not foresee of my child gaining her bipedal mobility, was that she was not the only object in our house that would no longer remain stationary. Scores of inanimate objects move about our house seemingly randomly on a daily basis. Conversations like, "Where's the television remote?" "Have you checked the bidet?" have become commonplace. Just this morning I had to use Apple's "Find My iPhone" service to locate my phone. The question is not if an electronic device will end up in the toilet, it's a matter of which electronic device will get flushed.

A very recent behavior has emerged of hoarding certain objects. I can tell, whenever she's marching from room to room with that determined look on her face, that some exodus of objects is taking place, be it coasters, pencils, toys, or clothes pins. Last week when I was mounting our new television on the wall, I took my eye off Nora's activities for a few minutes. When my parental "It's too quiet!" neurons fired, I wandered into the kitchen to find that she had herded all the television remotes and one RCA-to-SCART connector into a certain spot on the kitchen floor and was standing guard over them like a shepherd with her walking cane her grandparents bought her.

While I am delighted that this behavior is technically increasing order in the house, it has yet to be order that actually helps the rest of the members of the family in any way.