A few weeks ago I camera stalked G as he was playing in the living room. I’m trying to understand how to work my Speedlight better (I still prefer natural light photography by, say a factor of 1000, but I want to be comfortable with the flash for the times when I need it: crappy indoor light, mid-day high-sun, etc.). Anyway, camera geek-ness aside, I got to observe G in one of his favorite past-times: making the biggest mess he possibly can by evacuating every put-away toy onto our living room floor. He enjoys it with immense pleasure (as witnessed here).
And takes his job very seriously (as witnessed here)
Of course, he pays strict attention to detail, by not only relieving the small toy bins out of the toy chest, but also opening each small bin and dumping it’s contents out.
Mid-way through, my floor resembles something like this:
And once the toys were fully freed of their containment, he celebrated a job well done.
Now, here is where things got interesting…
G proceeded to line up his blocks against the wall of the toy chest
lining them up two by two. He would get irritated when only one would be left, and exit to get more blocks
Now, we have two sets of wooden blocks: a Melissa & Doug set he got for his first birthday, and a couple of blocks from when S was a kid. The S cubes are a little bigger and darker. Whenever an old block was in the mix, G insisted it had to be matched with another old block. New blocks could only be paired with another new block. If he found a new block after he had started using the old blocks, he would shift the old blocks out of the way, so that all the new ones were stacked together. It was really bizzare to watch. And scary. He would also get agitated if there wasn’t another block around so that his rows would both have an equal count of blocks.
So yeah, between S and my weirdness, I’d say we’ve managed to successfully pass our OCD onto him. Sigh.
