Obession

I had Ethan at my house this weekend.  He did his usual obsessive behaviors.  He opened the kitchen cabinets touch all the glasses, making tiny adjustments to get them in just the right place.  He did the same thing in the bathroom.  It got me thinking about how long he's been doing some variant of this. 

I remember it going all the way back to toddler-hood.  When he was maybe 18 months old, before we (tried) putting him down to sleep, he would take a bottle while watching a Sesame Street video.  The very last thing he did before going into his room was take the bottle and put it in the kitchen sink.

And God help us all if it rolled to far under the tv shelf for him to reach.  That reliably produced a major meltdown. He couldn't calm down until we got the bottle, gave it to him, and let him put it in the sink.  It didn't count if his mom or I did it.  It had to be him.

He still has that obsessive need.  But 23 years later he doesn't have meltdowns about it any more.  Which I will count as progress.