A while back Aunt Hen gave us this big tub full of plastic magnetic letters and numbers. We stuck a bunch on the fridge for Fuss to mess around with, but that was just siphoning off a few cups from the ocean. The bulk of them stayed in the tub behind the couch until Fuss spilled them all over the floor, where they persisted for several days.
Last night I got the bright idea to make a game of the cleanup, enlisting Fuss at minimum wage and forbidding the use of breathing masks in case curious reporters managed to breach the police cordon and snap incriminating pics.
In my mind, it would go like this: I'd demonstrate the process of putting letters and numbers back into the tub, he would follow suit, I would make with the effusive praise, then we'd lay out a picnic on the newly cleansed carpet and sing the old songs.
The reality was somewhat different.
I would dump a few handfuls into the tub, he'd grab this or that one back out with a cheerful "OOoooh, whasssat??", I'd say "it's a purple O" or "it's a red I" or whatever, he'd provide some salient counterpoint commentary; "OOoooh....BIG!" or "YELLow!", and then place it carefully back on the floor.
His patience for these things is for all practical purposes infinite. He'll periodically tire of an obsession, but the process is geologic, like watching South America drift away from Africa. Happily for Fuss my tolerance for repetition, while falling short of his, is mightier than The Wife's, who's eyes reliably begin rolling to the accompaniment of resigned sighs around the third iteration of his latest passion.
I spent most of an hour engaged in the Sisyphean task of refiling the bin and identifying the objects of his curiosity, until it was time to read books and go to sleep.
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