So we had a little drama this evening and while it’s not a huge deal, it perfectly illiterates some of the unique challenges I’m trying to manage.

We have a Soda Stream and the kids use it to carbonate their water. We’ve pretty much removed most of the sugary drinks from our lives. Anyway, I had to swap out the CO2 canister yesterday and for whatever reason, Emmett went and swapped it out again. Basically, he swapped a full canister for a full canister. That’s not a huge deal because I can just swap it back when this one is empty.

The problem was that I found it on the edge of the table in the kitchen. These canisters are under pressure and while they’re safe, you don’t necessarily want to drop them. Gavin was in the kitchen with me and I asked him if he knew who put that there. He said he didn’t know.

I asked Elliott the same question and Elliott couldn’t hear me so Gavin screamed the question at him. It’s super annoying because Gavin sticks him nose where it doesn’t belong and injects himself into things like this, resulting in nothing positive.

Before Elliott could be triggered, I shut Gavin down and reminded him that he needn’t inject himself because he’s not a parent. Both Elliott and Emmett get very frustrated with Gavin because he does this with relative frequency.

I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to help by backing me up but it causes nothing but problems. I’ve had to talk to him about this countless times and he doesn’t seem to learn from these experiences.

Anyway, about 20 minutes later, Elliott and I were talking, and trying to figure out how the canister got where I found it, Gavin chimes in. He said, and I quote, oh, you wanted to know who put the canister on the table in the kitchen? That was me. I put it there. I swear to god, if I had hair, I’d have been ripping it out. I turned around, looked at Gavin and was like, are you kidding me right now? After all that, you just now realized what I was asking and after denying it was you multiple times, you just matter of factly drop some truth on us?

Again, I don’t care who moved it, I’m just trying to make sure these guys know not to do that because it’s not safe. Turns out Elliott had put it in the middle of the dining room table, so that is was safe until I could pack it up and send it in for exchange. Emmett moved it to the table in the kitchen for some unknown reason and Gavin decided to move it to the edge of the table sometime after that. It might have been in his way and he moved it, which is fine, but the location he chose was not ideal.

By the time I get all this shit straight, Gavin’s freaking out because he says he didn’t understand and had gotten confused. That’s actually totally believable. Gavin is very, very easily confused and his memory is not very good, especially when it comes to his short term memory.

The whole point is that all I wanted to do was make sure whoever moved the canister, understood not to do so in the future. I honestly suspected it was Gavin because he has a very long history of placing things on the very edge of tables. I’ve written about that many times and I don’t know why he does that but he but he just always has. I’ve asked him a million times about why he does this and he doesn’t know. I wouldn’t care but he’s also prone to walking or bumping into things and that knocks whatever is on the edge of the table, over. Usually it’s whatever he’s drinking out of. It drives me crazy but that’s more annoying than anything else. This is a safety issue and that’s why I was trying to make this a teachable moment.

At the end of the day, everyone understands that we can’t put these canisters somewhere they can be knocked over. At least two of the three get it and one will probably do it again the next time. lol

Welcome to my life. It’s often hair pulling and trying to herd cats kinda fun but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.