Life with Pencils

Nathan's favorite toys aren't toys at all for the rest of us: pencils. Around our house, pencils can (and will) be found anywhere. Here are a few places they are found regularly out of doors.


- On the lawn.  Several pencils have met their doom by the lawn mower
- In the round pen.  This is also known as Nathan's 50 foot sand box.  Our horse has turned up more than a few pockets of pencils (Nathan's buried treasure) on her rides.
- In the compost bin, mixed in with grass clippings, shredded paper, horse manure, and general household scraps.
- In the chicken waterers
- In the hay stack (in the hay, on the hay, under the hay)
- In the horse pen.
  There are many more places for pencils inside the house. 


- Behind and under any furniture
- Under refrigerator and oven
- Behind the piano (there is currently a large cache of them there, which drives him nuts because he can see them but can't reach them.  Tara won't remove them out of principle, trying to help him understand that pencils don't belong there and are no longer accessible if he puts them there.)  I am not sure it is working.  We will see.  Eventually they may all be there and our problem will be solved. :)
- Inside heater vents (how far down are they?  how long are your arms?)
- But my least favorite place he has been hiding pencils of late:  Did you know that pencils will flush down the toilet?  Well, partway down, anyway.  I have ripped up the toilet three times in the last month, having to clean it out from underneath because pencils won't go down with a plunger or even with a toilet auger.  They have to come back out.  argh!  

One more thing you may not know is that pencils, when soaked in water become pliable (almost like rubber).  That only makes them harder to clear because they won't break with an auger but are still not soft enough to bend through the pipes.

Complicating the matter is the fact that we are trying to potty train Nathan, so he needs constant access to the toilet but we don't want him near it with pencils.  He always has a handful (or two) of pencils and loves them so much that we don't want to take them completely away from him either.  


Just one more Nathan joy: life with pencils.