Hey gang! I am currently writing my key-note address for the National Coming Out Day Brunch sponsored by The Utah Pride Center. They have kindly asked me to come speak about my post, Dear Hypothetically Gay Son. So, on Sunday at 11 I’ll be coming out in support of my LGBT friends and family! No matter where you are, I hope you’ll join me in doing the same. I’ll post a full version of what I say sometime next week. In the meantime, here is a post from my awesome wife about a cute habit The Duchess has formed. 

Love, Dad 

I (Mom) clean The Duchess’s room every day. Sometimes she helps, sometimes I do it when she’s not home. But this is generally the way it looks when it’s clean:

Now let’s fast-forward approximately 2.5 hours, after she wakes up from a nap:

To the untrained eye, this may look like a room that a toddler had some sort of tantrum in. You are probably thinking “man, this kid hates taking naps and takes it out on her poor room! She must have been in there for hours just throwing things around!”

You’d think that. But you’d be wrong. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Here is where all of my years of watching CSI come in handy. 

I know this wasn’t a tantrum or a toddler boredom session because there are still things on the shelf. Aside from the one book, all of her reading material is still where it should be. How many books do you know that have survived an actual tantrum? The diaper genie is still upright and the wipes haven’t been emptied from their pack. It’s all just blankets. And though you can’t see it, there is still a bottle of baby powder intact. There have been a couple times that we’ve walked in on the The Duchess reenacting a scene from Scarface when she’s gotten hold of that baby powder. You know which one…

All of these blankets came from a bin where they were previously folded in a very particular way. Not because I’m OCD, I just like things to be orderly… and by orderly I mean folded in half length-wise once, then the other way, then once more length wise. Then, of course, they should also stacked according to size and by material. That’s how everyone does it; right? Now, my perfectly folded blankets are seemingly strewn about haphazardly on the floor. Or are they? Let’s take a look at blanket #1 here. See it yet?

Let’s take a look underneath. Yep, like The Duchess herself, this little guy has been laid down for a nap. 

Let’s peek under a few other blankets.

After I lay The Duchess down and leave the room, she proceeds to lay down all her little friends for their respective naps. The trouble is, she has far more blankets than animal friends. So she starts to get creative. 

Observe:

Night night shoe!

Night night hat!

Night night block!

Yes, that is a shoe, a hat and a block, that have all been gently laid down for nap time. Under blankets. Ya know, in case they get cold.

Kind of makes this scene a little cuter when you look again, doesn’t it?

So I can never be mad when I go in to get her from a nap and walk in on this. Sure, I could move all of her blankets into another room or store them higher so they’re out of reach. But why would I do that? The two minutes it takes every day to re-fold them perfectly and put them in their proper order (ok…maybe a little longer than 2 minutes) is worth the mental image of her putting all of them to bed like this. 

And most of all, I will take this little ritual over a screaming anti-nap two-year-old any day. 

What about you? What funny little quirks do your offspring have? Putting animals to bed? Insisting on feeding real cheese to her fake dolls? The need to sing every song they know before bed? Let me know in the comments!

Love, 

Mom