Let’s back up to the middle of May now so I can catch up on some of our happenings.  If you’ll remember back to Ian’s birthday, my wonderful and generous coworkers brought him some  gifts to work on that Monday.  Ian came up during lunch to open his new presents, then he and Brinn took them home while I worked the rest of the afternoon.  While Ian’s enjoying all the gifts he received, he holds one in higher esteem than the others: his little red wagon.

Oh, Virginia… If you had any idea what you started.  Actually, Virginia (our academic coordinator in athletics) has a slight ornery streak that runs through her that gives her a determined attitude…  She probably would have still given Ian this wagon even if she had the gift of foresight because she admires spunk.

Brinn and Ian were trying to take Ian’s swag home, and I walked out with them to carry all the haul.  Our arms were too packed to carry Ian, and he did not want to stay with us as we walked down the hall, so Brinn solution was to plop him into the wagon and pull him out to the jeep.  This was our first mistake.  Our second mistake occurred about two weeks later in a fit of lazy parenting.  Ian (aka the energizer bunny) bounced from toy to toy in the living room while Brinn and I sat like sloths.  We were completely exhausted for it to only by 6:00 that evening, yet Ian was no where close to winding down and he wanted to play!  In our desperation to avoid as much physical exertion as possible, we pulled out the red wagon and sat Ian down in it.  Then we sat at opposite ends of the living room and pushed our son back and forth at one another until bath time at 6:30.  I know, great parenting skills, right?

After that, Ian started pulling his wagon around behind us.  When he would catch us, he would climb in and look up at us and grin.  His cuteness defied verbal descriptions.  So we engaged in mistake #3 by typically consenting to pull him around in his wagon for a while.

One morning two weeks ago, Ian had an unusually early start to his day.  I went ahead and got out of bed and changed Ian, then proceeded on to mistake #4 and pulled him in his wagon from 6:30 am to 7:30 am.  I was even able to do some light house cleaning during this process.  Pull Ian from the living room to the kitchen as I carried a drinking glass to the sink.  Drag Ian from the kitchen to the bathroom as I put away the new items from the grocery store I had picked up the night before. And on it went for an entire hour until I shook Brinn awake and bolted out the door for work.

The repercussions from our mistakes came to a head at about 9:00 am that morning.  At 9:30 Brinn called me to share his frustration.  “Ian keeps chasing me with his wagon.  When I try to wash dishes, he climbs in it, then screams!  I can’t get anything done with him and that wagon chasing me everywhere!”  Brinn even went as far as to hide little red wagon behind the couch, but skinny little boys can squeeze into some remarkably small areas.

After putting the wagon in our closet for a couple of weeks, Ian’s obsession has died down a little bit and we can now safely pull the wagon out for short periods.  Ian uses these opportunities to load it down with other toys, sticks, rocks, dishes, etc. and pull them around the living room and deck.  He’s tried to convince Mogwai and Chaco to climb in, but they were a no-go.  Ian still climbs in himself if you leave the wagon out too long.