Laundry, toilets, and persistance

My son loves to play games where he takes objects in and out of containers.  A perfect opportunity for him to play these is when Bonnie Jean sorts laundry.  As a standard part of laundry clothes are taken out of the dryer, put into a basket, removed from the basket, folded, and put back into the basket.  If he's lucky Bonnie Jean will even put him inside the laundry basket as she empties the laundry from the drier so he gets to enjoy all the warm clothes as they come down and she'll let him ride inside the laundry basket as it moves to the living room for sorting.  Laundry, from his perspective,  means put things in, take them out, wave them around and rumple them, and put them back in the white plastic laundry basket.

So Bonnie Jean was doing laundry and he was doing his best to participate in the general taking in and out and waving around involved.  He noticed another white plastic container in the room that he hadn't ever used in this game before.  Mommy almost never made a fuss about him playing container games with the laundry, so it was a perfect opportunity.  He grabbed my white Sunday shirt and proceeded to try to stuff it into the kitchen trash can.  Bonnie Jean tells me he was being quite persistant on this point and really really wanted to stuff my white shirt in the trash.

Then again, Bonnie Jean often is telling me these days about how persistent he is.  One of his favorite things is running splashing water.  When we start running his bath water we can hardly keep him out of the tub.  I've given up and started putting him in the tub while its still filling so he can admire how water comes out of the facet.  I have to get him most of the way washed while the water is still running because as soon as its done he'll probably decide its time to get out fairly soon afterwards.  This is all fine and dandy, but we use a diaper sprayer to clean the poop off the cloth diapers into the toilet.  This means that several times a day we make running water spray and splash into the toilet.  Very few things rivet his attention so well.  Since he can pull up on furniture now and is learning to climb it can be a struggle to keep him out of the toilet water.  A while ago Bonnie Jean tells me  he learned he didn't have to give up just because she was between him and the toilet.  He even decided he didn't have to give up when he crawled around her and she blocked him with her leg.  He climbed into the tub, explored a bit till Bonnie Jean had forgotten to watch out for what he might do next, and climbed over the edge of the tub on the side near the toilet to splash in the toilet water.  Just like Mommy, who was still trying to squirt the poop off the diaper.  I got home and Bonnie Jean told me "Your son is very persistent."  Whenever she says that, I know I'd better ask what he did this time...