I should have seen it coming. I knew that my youngest son would be more troublesome than the eldest, but I thought it would be a while before I had to spend money to solve troubles caused by little boys.
Well, my little boy, it turns out, has an unquenchable fascination with little rocks and pebbles. We went to a fantastic playground last weekend in Maryland , but all he cared about was throwing rocks at the tiny stream from the short bridge that crossed it.
Our neighbors have a path of white rocks by their driveway and whenever he gets a chance, my two year old goes there to play with them. Last Thursday I let the boys play in the back and front yard while I mowed the lawn. When I was cleaning up I heard my 4 year old screaming at his brother and calling me. It turns out the little one had been throwing rocks at our sewage vent by the curb. The cap was broken by the neighbor's car last winter and we hadn't replaced it. I forgot to mention that he'd thrown a bamboo stick in there the day before and had been scolded for it. I said no, that he was not to throw any rocks in there and we came inside.
Lo and behold, my husband was getting ready to leave for work this morning when (fortunately) he looked into the basement and realized that there was water leaking from the sewage pipe. We had both just taken showers and there was a lot of water, so about 1/4 of the basement was already wet. I went into full damage control mode, putting buckets to pick up the water trickling from the pipe and mopping the floor, while he started calling plumbers. We ended up getting Roto-rooter because they were the only ones who could come before 3 p.m. I just didn't want to be at home with two little ones and not being able to use the water.
I promptly remembered the rocks and a check at the vent outside confirmed my fears -- the pipe was half full of water. The plumber "snaked it" and all was fine in the end. I know it could have been worse, but this was a very expensive boy "game," it cost only 250 dollars...
Hubby said that we should deduct this from his future allowances!! :) If only he weren't just 2 years old...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
What a nightmare! But It's hard to be angry at childhood curiousity, isn't it?
Yikes! Elias loves stones, too, though we won't have this particular issue. About a year and a half ago (or more?) Pedro stuck a coin in the CD slot in our car's CD player, rendering it (and somehow the radio, too) useless. We just got around to fixing it, and we had to buy a whole new one, to the tune of 100 euros. Aren't little kids fun?
Oh man, that sounds fun! Water problems can happen so suddenly and be so hard to deal with. Our younger son also suprised us by doings things (like writing MOM on a wall in giant letters with a read crayon or cutting all the flowers off my houseplants with scissors!) that would never even have occured to his older brother.
This stuff is always funny when it happens to someone else.
My little sister once put pennies down the back of the television set, which caused it to go completely haywire.
Post a Comment