Line ‘em up

I’m not sure if this is an Alby thing or a little boy thing or maybe it’s just part of his British-ness, after all it’s a well known fact that us Brits love a good queue, but the boy is obsessed with lining up his cars. 

Nowadays you can pretty much put money on the fact that when you go into the living room there will be at least one surface with cars lined up in a row, bumper to bonnet, straight as an arrow.  It might be the TV unit, the sofa, the coffee table or the floor.  Or all of them.  It might involve three cars in a row or twenty.  It would appear that neither the surface not to quantity has any real importance, so long as they are in a row.

Whilst I am the first to put my hand up as possessing a number of OCD qualities, I swear that he hasn’t got this from me.  And as it started before Mark came back from Afghanistan I’m confident it doesn’t come from him either.  Whatever the root – and more likely than not it’s a pretty standard developmental step all toddlers go through, I find it brilliant.  He takes it so seriously.  Whilst a tower of bricks will get taken out with a full arm swing and evil cackle to accompany it, the cars are handled in the most gentle manner.  If the line runs out of space he individually moves each car along by a couple of centimeters to make more room, regardless of how long the line or how much time it takes to do.

From being a toddler with serious ADHD, flitting from one activity to the next, emptying a toy box on the floor only to throw all the toys around and then head to the next toy box to do the same again before charging around the house six times and then jumping up and down the steps, he has now become a most focused and serious Al-bug. 

Well, let’s keep this in perspective.  For twenty minutes he will focus on the cars.  Then he will abandon them and charge around the house destroying everything and anything in his way. My father named him ASBO about six months ago – seriously how many acronyms can a child have after his name?  In my pregnancy days I confess I’d daydream of my Little Man making something for himself, and often such things are acknowledged through added initials at the end of the name.  Not for the life of me did I think that at just 20 months I’d be the proud(?) mother of Albert Trouble Monkey OCD. ADHD. ASBO.