My Drumstick

Alex seems to form serial attachments to objects. I’ve already talked about My Pillow and how he came to sleep with it every night. He still sleeps with My Pillow, but another object has won out as far as being carried all around the house and every where we go. And that is My Drumstick.

My Drumstick is the drumstick that came with a little musical instrument set Alex has had for over a year, but is just finally starting to get the hang of. It matches a fish-shaped hollow drum/noisemaker that has broken three times in the last few weeks, so that I have in essence re-glued the entire top back together in three separate instances. The fish drum is important too, but the drumstick goes EVERYWHERE with Alex. We don’t usually let him take it out of the car if we go somewhere (Daddy brilliantly came up with “leave it in the car so it is here when you get back” and that logic works for Alex, thankfully) but around the house, Alex and My Drumstick are inseparable. My drumstick goes to bed with him. When he wakes in the morning, he now brings it rather than My Pillow into our bedroom with him. He holds it while playing with other toys. He is generally pretty good about sharing for a two year old, but My Drumstick is off limits to others. It is his constant friend.

It is actually a bigger punishment to put My Drumstick in time out than it is to put Alex in time out. For the grave offense of hitting the piano bench with the drumstick (the hazard of him being attached to a drumstick is that the inclination is to hit inappropriate things with it!) My Drumstick got a 20 minute time out. I thought that would be an eternity for a toddler and he would have forgotten the drumstick completely. Oh no. When that timer went off, Alex excitedly declared “my drumstick! my drumstick!” and was thrilled to get it back. But, not before he owned up to the problem that got the drumstick time out to begin with. He was able to tell me in response to my asking “Do you know why your drumstick got time out?” — after 20 minutes, mind you — that the reason My Drumstick went into time out was that he hit the piano bench, and no hitting the piano bench or other furniture with My Drumstick. And since then, he hasn’t. The message definitely sunk in.