Chaos - Order - Entropy

Here, for no particular purpose but my own sanity and your entertainment (I hope), is a story about Friday:

Most people understand the concept of chaos – parents especially, since even the best-behaved children are by nature tiny chaos machines.

If you’d asked me Friday morning if I understood chaos, I may have answered yes, but more likely would have flung a screeching preschooler at you and fled.

Chaos Part 1: The Doctor’s Office

We arrive early. We have the first appointment of the day – no waiting, yay! Henry is giggly and charming, if slightly wiggly, as the nurse weighs and measures him. He balks at the blood pressure cuff, but no biggie. He’s distracted by a super-awesome dinosaur-truck book, so who has time for blood pressure? I notice his little hands trembling as we turn pages. I assume he is excited.

We wait. We play “I Spy” and “I’m Thinking of a Tasty Food” and I start getting cocky, hoping the doctor will walk in just as my barely-3-year-old is effortlessly pronouncing “stethoscope” or something. Someone does walk in, but it’s a nurse informing us that not only is the doctor late, no one knows where she is or when she’ll be back. Henry bolts behind the exam table when the door opens. I assume we are playing hide-and-seek.

Finally the Doc arrives. And Henry explodes.





There is screaming. Wailing. Hysterical cries of “OW OW OW OW OW” when the stethoscope is applied. When I suggest that it doesn’t hurt, but may be a little cold, the cries become “COLD COLD COLD COLD,” then “HOT HOT HOT HOOOOOOT.” The little light looking into his ear is obviously razor-sharp and coated in sulfuric acid. This continues.

I mumble some things about him not normally behaving like this, and even though I’m telling the truth, I see where the doctor is coming from when she gives me a “Yeah, sure” look.

I figure I’ve had this coming to me – after all, one of my earliest memories is of seeing an open doctor’s office door and bolting.  I get Henry through the exam with a modified half-Nelson and the repeated reassurance that we’re going to gymnastics when it’s all over.

Chaos Part 2: Gymnastics


Oh, that awesome toddler-Bacchanalia class you signed up for with tumbling and fingerpainting and snacks? It’s on Thursdays, not Fridays! Even though the registration said Fridays! Whoopsie!

The tired-looking college girl who answers the locked door at the gym just kind of stares at me. I become one of those people who argues a point there’s no point in arguing. The gym is closed.

Henry figures out that the trampolines and balance beams and foam pit are not happening and morphs into a 300-pound rubber doll filled with the tears of a thousand sorrows.

I coddle and hug and wrangle him back into the car. I promise McDonalds, but Henry does not understand that they don’t make fries until 10. I drive in circles in the mall parking lot, trying to convince inconsolable Henry that we should pass the time at the playground inside.

As I’m debating storming McDonalds and demanding they turn on the deep fryer (because seriously, no fries til 10?!), I get a text message. It says, “I can see you!”

The day phases into Order, Glorious Order.

One of my best friends, with one of Henry’s best friends in tow, is in that very same parking lot, headed to that same playground, then to the same McDonalds. The chattering rabid monkey-child in my backseat turns back into sweet, happy Henry.

The rest of the day is filled with obedience and singalongs and hot crispy fries.

Even bedtime, which features a potentially disastrous new plan for getting baby Danny to sleep, goes remarkably well. By 8 p.m. Danny is snoozing peacefully in his crib in the room he’ll eventually share with Henry, and Henry is zonked out in his Toy Story pop-up tent in one corner of our room.

But here’s a funny thing about chaos – its opposite isn’t really order. It’s entropy.

Entropy is the nature of things to go a step beyond order and break down into basic parts, until the whole universe is just a big pile of basic parts.

It’s like this:

Chaos is chicken, blackberries, onions, cheese, tomatoes, milk, tortillas, and enchilada sauce.

Order is a plate of enchiladas with a side of blackberries and a cup of milk.

Entropy is the purpley goo Henry threw up at 2 a.m.

So that was Friday.