You thought I was kidding

This is good. Thomas really outdid himself this time.

I've told you before that the twins bedroom is decorated like a prison cell: bare walls, no furniture except one toddler bed and one mattress which is sitting on the floor. Why only one bed? How quickly we forget. The twins dismantled the other bed... repeatedly and energetically. It got to be a bit of a safety hazard having them swinging metal poles around at each other saying things like, "It's a sword!" or "I'm going to hit you now, Lijah!"

Boys will be boys.

We even replaced the doorstop, which was one of those uber-non-child-friendly ones that comes apart and can unscrew from the wall. The only reason why they would leave it alone is that it goes BOOOOIIIIIINNNNNNNNNG! when it's still attached. So we bought the kind that you can actually pound into the wall permanently. This is what our life is like and I suspect you know what I'm talking about if you're a parent, too.

So yesterday, as usual, we put Elijah in our bedroom to fall asleep while Thomas battled off his drowsiness in the twins room. All was going well until something made me go check on Tommy.

When I went in, he couldn't stop rubbing his eyes. They were clearly really bothering him, so I asked Josh to rinse his eyes out while I went for the benadryl. Thomas was mumbling something clearly irrational about "the wall" making his eyes hurt. I just patted him on the head and tried to validate his feelings: "Oh, the wall hurt your eyes? That must be very ... ummm ... disturbing. Err sad. Err uncomfortable! I'm sorry that happened." Meanwhile thinking this kid is obviously very tired because walls are flat and can't hurt people's eyes.

So the eye got rinsed out, the medicine was taken to try to reduce the itchiness and Tommy went back to bed. Then he pointed over my shoudler and said, "See? That's where the wall hurt my eyes!"

Huh. The delusion is getting more specific. Curious.

I looked over my shoulder to where he pointed. Behind the door, a small chunk of the wall had been torn apart. Yes, folks, that's right. He had used his sweet, tiny hands to tear off the sheetrock and, naturally, rub it in his eyes.

The obvious next question? "Ummm Tommy... sweetheart... did any of the sheetrock, you know, go into your mouth? Did you swallow any of it?"

I swear he actually sounded embarrassed (a first for this free thinker) as he answered quietly, "Mmhmm."

Josh and I looked at him for a moment or two, told him to get comfy and promised we'd check on him in a few minutes, then headed for the computer to look up the poison control info. Turns out that sheetrock is not hazardous if ingested, which was good news. I grabbed my vacuum and headed to the bedroom to clean up the rest of the mess.

Best of all? It wasn't until nearly 24 later that I realized this is a story worth sharing: in a room filled with nothing, my son tears apart the walls themselves. It was so very ordinary that I forgot how really funny it was.