Weekend Repost: My Destructive One

I think I am going to try and start reposting on Sundays. It tends to be a busy day for me and I don't often have time to write a new post (and know that I don't get half as many blog hits on Sundays as I do on Wednesdays so it almost feels like a lot of effort for not much).

So, this is one of my favorite blogs. It is also one of my most controversial (at least according to the family, you can see their comments here: http://craybickford.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-destrcutive-one.html).

So, enjoy, leave a comment or two and enjoy your Sunday!

I have boys. Two full on boys.

I have to be honest that this is something new to me. Although I grew up with two brothers they were not those kind of boys. I know that you all know those boys that I am talking about. Scared of nothing, dirty all the time (and loving it), skinned knees and, a bit, destructive. Alex and Loren were not like that.

The worst that Loren did (oh man, he is going to kill me) was run around dressed like Mary Poppins with about 5 different umbrellas. Or there was the time he dressed like Peter Pan, complete with a feather in his hat. He was so serious I thought he might try to fly off the roof.

Alex may have been more of a "man's man" but he was still pretty mild. There was the time he hit Loren while bike riding that ended in a trip to the ER (for Loren)...but then there were the million T-ball and Little League games where he spent more time picking flowers (or holding himself) than actually playing the game.

Zachary is definitely a stereotypical boy. He rides his bike hard, he fights with other boys hard and if he had a sister I know that he would pop all the heads off her Barbie dolls for no apparent reason. He goes through stages of "destruction". He likes to take things apart (but hasn't figured out how to fix them), and when he is bored, he breaks things. I have some to realize that these stages are around the same time that the seasons change. The beginning of spring, he has spring fever, things get broken or, in this case, torn.

Last week, while he was suppose to be cleaning his room, he took a pair of scissors to two pairs of pants. The first was a hole in the knee and the second was beyond repair - he cut the legs off (in my defense, I was prepared to turn these into shorts and make him wear them but they, somehow, got thrown away).

He is growing like a weed and has very few jeans that actually fit him anymore. Most of them look like high waters on him now and this was a very nice pair that didn't come halfway up his shins. I am not going to go out and buy him new clothes this time of year, he will just grow out of them by fall and, soon enough, he will be in shorts anyway (besides all that I don't think it sets a good example to buy him something to replace the item that he ruined in the first place). On top of that, I refuse to allow him to wear clothes with holes in them to school. Therefore, these jeans had to be taken care of.

My intention was to put a patch on that didn't look too horrific but just horrific enough that he was a little embarrassed about wearing them to school. Maybe that would teach him a lesson. Well, he is lucky that he, obviously, has a very cool mom that doesn't even know she is cool.

When he came home from school and saw what I was doing he said (with incredible enthusiasm) "I hope you finish them by the morning so I can wear them to school". Grrr.

I own a sewing machine and this tasks probably would have taken 15 minutes with a sewing machine. But just because I own the sewing machine doesn't mean I have a clue how to use it. I tried to get my mother (the quilting instructor) to teach me and even she got irritated with it.

So, two hours, lots of needle stick in my fingers and a sore neck from bending over it all afternoon, this was the end result:





The patch says "Laconia Bike Week 2006". It was from a shirt that had been washed and worn so many times that the elastic in the neck was all crunchy. It was one of my favorite shirts (how white trash, huh). But I saved it from being turned into rags for my son - the destructor - and man was he happy. He threw those pants on this morning, sporting my beautiful patch and ran out the door to school (with his Red Sox Spring Jacket).

So much for lesson learned...