Let me start that this was relayed to me. Unfortunately, I was not able to witness it first hand and Xie wishes she could have had it recorded.

Yesterday Lex was up early and recently we’ve got a new early morning routine of saying goodbye before I go to work. In the past, he was always still asleep when I left. From his room he watched me take out the trash and leave for work. He was waving and smiling the whole time.

I guess about a half hour later he goes running into the master bedroom. He was saying “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy”.

Xie answered, “What is it?”

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy – they took it!”

“They took what?”

“They took the trash”

“Ok”

“No, Mommy Mommy Mommy (he is very repetitive when excited and gathering his thoughts). They took the trash. Daddy took the trash outside and then they took it away. We need to go get it.”

“They are supposed to take it”

“No, Daddy took the trash outside and left it by the street and they took it away.”

That’s the dialog that was told to me last night when I got home. Xie then explained to Lex how the trash man comes and picks up the trash. That the trash man did nothing wrong. He then wanted to take more trash out so they would come back and he would get to see them again.

Maybe Xie will comment on here or Facebook on anything I got wrong. While amusing at first, I’m sure part of his excitement and worry goes back to a week and a half ago when his stroller was stolen. He understood then what it was like to lose something that wasn’t temporary like he would for a punishment. When that happened he was more confused and didn’t understand. I’m sure part of how he felt that he didn’t seem to express came out when he saw Daddy purposely set something on the street and someone else came and took it.

While it wasn’t a great thing to have the stroller stolen, it seems to have taught Lex the lesson of what it feels like to have it happen to him. It will hopefully ingrain in him that he should never do it. That kind of understanding and learning from the event might just have been worth getting the stroller stolen.

Now I’m just wondering where he thought the trash went all this time….