On Genes and Furniture Placement

My dear husband is a very motivated person. He loves to plan and scheme and to see said plans and schemes come to fruition. Case in point: while we were moving, he brought almost every single piece of our furniture from our upstairs to our downstairs and then again from downstairs to upstairs at my parents' house completely by himself. We're talking dressers, entertainment center, desk, etc. (Well, some call it motivated, others call it crazy.) He truly will do anything once he sets his mind to it. (Once he sets his mind to it, mind you...not when I set his mind to it...)

His rationale was that with the combined forces of a dolly and his smooth moving skills, it really wasn't such a big deal. (Here we differ on a large scale: I have been known to consider it a big deal to get a jar open by myself.) His mad skills involve moving furniture end over end on their way up and down the stairs, making it an allegedly "easy" task.   (As you can see, he and I don't typically use the word easy in the same kinds of sentences.)

The more I get to know my oldest child, the more I see how like her dad she is. Julia is very motivated, very independent, and she very much likes doing things that are her own idea (and little else). Case in point: the ottoman. One morning when the girls had risen with the sun (and thus a lot sooner than the likes of me) I found that they had somehow managed to drag the ottoman all the way up the stairs and get it up on the top bunk. (They = mostly Julia.) While I sat their dumbfounded, Craig recognized her genius. He asked how she got it up the stairs and she replied, ever so nonchalantly, the she had done it end over end.

The funny thing is, she never actually saw Craig move any of the furniture down or up the stairs, because he had done it all after the kids had gone to bed. She just figured it out because her crazy little brain wires are identical to her dad's.

Guess it's true what they say after all: the ottoman really doesn't sit far from the couch.