Mom Is Right

After only three days at my parents house, Henry has gone to the dogs. He used to be a nice, well mannered, housebroken furball; now he is a nice furball. (Actually he's still fairly well mannered now that he's remembering that when "mommy and daddy" say something to him, he actually has to do it.)

He pretty much got away with murder when we were in Cedar Rapids. Not only is he small and cute and everyone loves to talk to him in high-pitched, googly voices, but Ernie (his older cousin) is around to fight/play with.

We also get real distracted by The Kid and other siblings when we're at home, so poor Henry didn't get watched as closely as he should have.

Mom says Henry is getting us ready for kids, and she's totally right. Once we got Henry home on Tuesday, I realized we were in for a bit of trouble.

He was kind of needy, whiny, and altogether disobedient to normal house rules. (He acted a whole lot like us kids probably did after we got back from Grandpa and Grandmas and we got to eat things like Lucky Charms that our mom never let us have.) He also was having accidents every morning.

Which brings me to this morning.

I shut the bedroom and bathroom doors to keep Henry out in the open so we could watch him. I was out in the living room talking to Joey, and Henry was sitting under the glass-topped coffee table, looking angelic as usual.

Until I noticed he was looking up at me with sort of distressed eyes, the kind he uses when he looks at me when he's outside, doing his business.

Sure enough, he was. Right in front of me.

I picked him up, said "NO NO!" real sharply, and hurried him over to the door, holding him away from my body. Just in case. I didn't hear any little splats, so I figured I'd caught him in time. Joey was right behind me and as we got to the hallway, I handed Henry to Joey.

As I turned to go back inside I heard "Oh, he's losing stuff," and didn't think anything of it until....

squish

I began shieking and wailing. Henry looked all confused and traumatized while Joey hurried him outside. I had stepped in a freshly fallen Henry Present. Hopping on one foot, I promptly attempted to wash the unclean foot with a lot of soap and scrubbing.

Henry was extremely subdued when he came back inside, he knows he was a bad boy. Now let's just hope he remembers he's at home and he has to behave again.

Just like a little kid.