THINGS TOO AGGRAVATING TO GO GRAB THE CAMERA DURING: The Bouncy Seats

The scene:The witching hour (6:00 to 7:00 p.m.)Our peaceful dinner is complete and dishes cleaned, but it is too soon to start putting them to bed.The living roomTry us. We know every cartoon that is on during the witching hour on any network.The Source of the Aggravation:Bathing children and calls from work do not compliment one another.Around 6:30 mom will suggest that she go start bathing babies one-at-a-time, alone, upstairs, with one child, while the remainder chew on each other and scream with dad watching on. That generally works rather well, until the phone rings, and it is dad’s work.Mom is upstairs bathing one baby, dad sets another in the bouncy seat to go grab the phone quickly, the boys start running toward the phone unrelentingly believing that one of these days we’re going to let them answer it. It’s work. He moves to the back bedroom to get away from the toddlers, who are chasing the phone, still thinking that they are going to be allowed to talk on it. Where did they come up with this idea? The back door closes.Here you may start making judgments, but we have to make them sometimes as well. Two toddlers and one baby left in the living room. Dad is on a quick call with work in the back. Mom is almost through bathing a baby upstairs. The toddlers are a little wound up because they could have sworn that this was the time they would get to answer the phone. It takes only a moment to realize the freedom and figure out a plan. Seriously, I don’t know how they come up with these things so quickly.In his rush to grab the phone before the answering machine, the baby in the bouncy seat was placed in the bouncy seat, not buckled in the bouncy seat. One fresh baby later, mom comes downstairs to exchange babies. On her way down the stairs she hears “Reeeeee! Reeeee!,” coming from Benjamin (toddler speak for “Weeeee!”) and fits of laughter from Nicholas. She smiles because this is better than quiet. Quiet means something is wrong. She rounds the corner with a smile on her face getting ready to join the fun. And instead she sees Benjamin laying on the bouncy seat testing the engineering and metal frame by bending the top all the way down to the ground. In one swift movement he rolls, yells “reeeee!,” starts Nicholas laughing, and releases the seat, catapult-style, baby and all.For some unknown reason, the baby only lifts momentarily in the air and lands back in her little seat. Hence, the utter lack of protest from the baby to this point, although the repeated attempts have been nudging her out of the chair and she is getting close to simply falling out. And this is all far too aggravating to go grab the camera during, so we fortunately have no proof.