My son the middle manager

Mayhem is just full of ideas - ideas of things for other people to do. Most of Havoc & Mayhem's play is Mayhem directed, in theory. Havoc may come up with the idea - "Lets build a tent with blankets" but Mayhem quickly takes over with suggestions about which blankets, where to put them in the living room, how to arrange them and what toys to take into the tent. Havoc, like any good cubical worker, looks like he is listening and then goes and does what he was intending to do anyway & then explains away any discrepancies in the final project by persuading Mayhem they were actually his idea. So it works out.

Mayhem thinks I should be more of a traditional mom. I assume this from the projects he comes up with for me to do. He is full of ideas of what I should be baking. "You should make these muffins today Mama. Then these tomorrow and then these. Then maybe you can make these for when we go camping." Mayhem's favorite book is

500 Best Muffin Recipes

He pages through this thing every day and brings it to me with ideas. "These muffins look good, why you not make them? When we have these muffins for dinner?" He sounds just like my old boss bringing me articles from trade publications and asking me why we aren't using this software (um, because the company is too cheap to pay for it and the training necessary or better yet, it has NOTHING to do with my job). I wouldn't mind so much, but like managers who ask for reports and then never look at them, Mayhem rarely eats the muffins he asks me to make.

When he isn't bossing me around making helpful suggestions in the kitchen, he gets out his other favorite book

Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet

and suggests things I ought to be crocheting. He does play with the toys at least. I just finished this penguin at his request.

I'm working on an octopus for Havoc right now, then Mayhem thinks I should make the owl, then the dog, then maybe the monkey, then another dinosaur.

I'm not letting this kid know about my quilting books.