Pumpkin Pie left the legos out. Again. Sweet Pea and Pickles played with them while they were out, but Pumpkin Pie was in charge of them and left them out when he went to bed. For the third day in a row. I’d had enough of the legos all over my family room floor (they are the big Duplo kind they like to make life-sized guns out of). They spread like a rash and hurt when I step on them (and you have to go through the family room to get almost anywhere in the flipping house!) So after Pumpkin Pie went to bed and Sweet Pea and Pickles were upstairs giggling and playing with the new keyboard trying to make it sound like farts or something I snapped. I scooped up all the legos and put them back in the bin. Then I marched the bin upstairs and hid it in Husband’s closet. So there. Take that irresponsible lego owners. Nya.
G'ahead, try *not* to step on me. I dare you.
Simply taking the legos wasn’t enough to feed my need for revenge. I needed them to know I had taken them, but I wasn’t going to nag at them any more about it because we all know how that turned out three days and several lego-shaped indentations in my feet later. I turned to my evil creative side. Hmmmmm. How about ransoming the legos? For what, though? The howler monkeys don’t have any damn money. Every penny they get gets spent on plastic crap and gum. Hmmmmm. There are no child labor laws on Cloud 8, obviously, so how about forced manual child labor chores! They would have to earn back the legos by doing chores. Lots of chores. I like it!
In order to get them interested in the whole venture, I was going to have to be sneaky. I made sure they were occupied upstairs and I set to work with the paper recycling box, tape and scissors. This is what I created:
Of course I thought this was hysterically funny and had to keep myself from laughing too hard or they would detect a disturbance in the force and find me before I was ready. Between giggles and snorts I finally finished, taped it to the fridge and waited. And waited. And waited some more until Pickles finally came down for a snack.
Pickles: What’s this?
Me (acting cool): Hmmm? Oh, I dunno…
Pickles (leaving): Oh, okay.
Me: Wait! It looks like a ransom note…
Pickles: What’s a ransom note? And why are the letters all funny like that? Why did you do that?
At this point I realized that Pickles obviously did not have the interest background knowledge to make this activity fun. Sweet Pea was on his way downstairs, though. He’ll bite, he loves a silly game.
Sweet Pea: What’s that? Where are the legos? Huh? I’m not doing any chores!
Me: It looks like that’s how you get the legos back.
Sweet Pea: Meh. I don’t like them that much, anyway.
So now I have a huge box of legos taking up valuable real estate in Husband’s closet and no one gives a rat’s rooty toot. Parenting fail.
Update: 4 weeks later, Pumpkin Pie decided he wanted them back. I traded him the legos back for helping me put away the clean laundry. Husband has his shoe space back and the lego box is back in the basement. Parenting compromise.
