Thursday, July 05, 2007

order and chaos

it is hard to see exactly what these little people are going to grow up to be, but by this age you definitely start to see some inclinations. we noticed that thomas has a thing for patterns and order. i.e. if there are 3 light switches in a row, he likes them all up or down. if there are 4 shutter panels on a window, he likes them all open, or all closed. if there is any deviation, he exclaims, points anxiously, then goes and makes it all symmetrical. if he can't reach, he will point until you help him make it symmetrical.

we have a costco pack of water bottles in a sideboard by the front door. he loves to take those all out, one by one, and put them in a row or a semi-circle. at the end, he does the olympic layout finale pose to make sure you are clapping for him :)


we also have a bunch of those hotel shampoos and lotions in our lower bathroom drawers - probably from the last 10 years or so. he used to just take them all out, willy nilly. now he takes out only the ones he wants and groups them collectively. a week ago, i was walking into the bathroom and as i rounded the corner, i was stopped in my tracks by this nice little formation, placed squarely in the middle of the entrance to our closet. if you notice, all of the white caps are together, as are the gold caps.


yesterday morning, he decided to stop with the bottles (only black caps) and started lining up O's. they were in the den, so he ran back and forth several times to complete his row. as he was placing the 9th or 10th one down, he bumped some of them and got so mad he was almost ready to cry. so i came over and helped straighten out the strays for him.


here's a winner from just this morning. these are organized on the edge of our bathtub. it is a favorite staging area of his. again, notice similar bottles grouped together. pretty amazing!!


of course he is a little boy and definitely has destruction mode as well. but that is usually once he is bored with an item, or when he is tired/cranky. so maybe we have a budding engineer or architect. or maybe one of those chinese acrobats that can balance 40 plates while riding a unicycle. ha ha...

9 comments:

Happy Beginnings said...

that's so interesting! so is this trait more like william or more like you? =)

Cynthia said...

puahaha that's haliriuos! I love how everything is a toy to them. The best is how proud he is of himself too after.

jnet liangster said...

what a smartie/cutie!

Alexya said...

Oh My Gosh!! He is so cute how he does that!! I think Thomas and I are going to get along great as he gets older because I do that all the time!! I think it could also mean that he will be good at math...I love math because it is very organized and has a right or wrong answer, no grey area. Anyway, I miss him and I need to see him soon! I would miss you too Catherine, but I just saw you last weekend.. ;)

Anonymous said...

That is amazing! Sara is not like that at all. Her favorite activity is to hum tunes and sit at the piano for 1-2 hours (yes, THAT long). It makes you curious just what they'll turn out to be..

Anonymous said...

1-2 hours, collectively, a day. She can sit for 1 whole hour and not get off the bench. Then play with something else or snack and go for another hour.

Debbie said...

That's so funny about Thomas! Either he's going to be a super genius boy or totally OCD! He can totally help you guys get your house organized!

catherine said...

i know - we think he is a smartie too! :) but he certainly can't hum a tune worth anything. ha ha... he tries to sing, it's really funny. completely unrecognizable as singing.
hmmm.... i am more obsessive than william when it comes to putting things in order, but william is more efficient with processes and getting things done. actually both grandfathers are engineers so probably comes from there. my dad loves order and math so yeah, definitely not from me.

Anonymous said...

How funny! Eric totally went through the same stage of organizing things, making lines and arrangements. And I think he was about the same age.