OCD, Yeah you know me!

The Mud Puddle is nothing if not his mother’s son. When he becomes fixated with something (“stuck in his craw” as my Aunt Gladys might say) it is all he can think about, refer to, and discuss much to the detriment of my sanity (such as it is). He becomes obsessed, and while not full blown OCD as a victim of a slight version myself I can see the pattern forming.
Some recent examples:

His hair – I bought him a brush as the Disney store. More b/c he had used it on his hair than I actually thought he needed a brush. That is one of those items that once you use it you can’t put it back IMO.
So I bought it for him. And then he was brushing his hair every few minutes. He had to have it in his pocket and handy the rest of the day.
He would wet down his hair and brush it forward – he called this “SnipIts’ because that is what they do when they cut his hair (at a place called SnipIts). I had a momentary freak out on this one b/c I couldn’t see him when he said it, and I figured he had pulled a Fudge from “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” on me and given himself a home haircut. Thanks goodness he only meant putting water on his hair.
The next morning he got up and wanted to brush his hair but couldn’t find it. This led to me tearing around the house looking for an Incredibles hairbrush (with attached mirror dontcha know) while he ‘looked’ for it in his room whilst playing with his toys. MMHMMM. Right. I finally found it but vowed if he is going to become obsessed with something and then lose it - he is on his own.

Going someplace special – We took him to his first Red Sox game last week and invited one of his friends from school and his parents. We didn’t mention this to the Mud Puddle b/c it was the third baseball game we had tried to go to and the first two were canceled due to illness and rain respectively.
So when we got to daycare three days before the game and his friend comes running over yelling “WE ARE GOING TO SEE BASEBALL! WE ARE GOING TO THE RED SOX!” I inwardly groaned.
All I heard about for the next three days was the Red Sox and going to the game and what he was going to do at the game (he couldn’t quite grasp why he couldn’t play on the field and kept asking where the Red Sox sleep since that is their home).

Then this week he figured out my conversation between my dad on the phone and Scott on the couch that my dad would pick him up on Thursday. I TRIED to keep it generic and coded but he saw through it and has pranced around all week talking about Grampy coming to get him in the Big Black Truck. (which apparently is his and he lets Grampy borrow it – who knew he could drive??) I went so far as to try and control the chatter (HA! It is like hitting my head against a brick wall but I am sure I can bust through someday) by letting him cross off each day on the calendar and putting a monkey sticker (it was handy) on the day Grampy was going to pick him up. All this did was turn the chit, chit chatter from Grampy and the black truck to “MONKEY DAY” ( the sticker was a bad idea apparently). How many times was I asked “Is it Monkey Day yet?” ? I estimate somewhere between 300 and 400 times, more than enough to send me right into Crazytown.

The sad part is, at 34, I am just as bad – I have just learned to internalize my obsessions a little better, but they are still there.