We somehow managed as a one-car family for a few years until about this time last year, when we were able to acquire a second that was new enough to spare us used-car worries.  That has helped immensely as our younger two kids increasingly need to be in different places, often at the same time.  But Anthony occasionally plays the wild card that sets us back to our one-car days.

My wife asked recently if I could get off work early enough to be home to meet Anthony off the bus, then go to pick up our daughter while my wife attended to another scheduled activity involving our younger son.  Anthony came home, went to the bathroom and urinated as usual, then I had him finish so we could go.  It was immediately clear something was amiss when, before he stood up, he slammed his head into the adjacent bathtub--where he has already broken off several pieces of the bathtub skirt; still trying to determine the direction to go with that issue--and I realized he probably needed to sit longer to finish his business.  I had him sit back down, but because he was angry he sat down with a lot of force and broke the other side of the toilet seat (I wrote about this a month ago) and separated the pieces.  I tried to put the front half of the seat back up against the back half, but Anthony didn't like it and whimpered as he sat there.  I called my wife to let her know the situation, and she let our daughter know she would have to wait an extended time before being picked up. 

I ultimately went out later to pick up our daughter, and together we made a side trip to get a new toilet seat.  I'm starting to wonder if I should look into buying them in bulk. 


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 My wife had her MP3 player hooked up to speakers, and went downstairs for a time.  After a while, she noticed that the music coming from upstairs didn't seem to be anything she recognized as being on her player.  She went upstairs, saw that her player had been turned down, and Anthony had inserted a CD purchased for our daughter into the laptop on the counter.  We didn't know he knew how to do that, but he must have seen it done at some point.  I still wonder why it is that he can figure out things like that, but can't follow simple instructions from us.  I guess the auditory receptors that translate words into ideas in his brain just don't work.