Oh, Beaver.

When Steven and I were first married we had satellite tv. Hundreds of channels and nothing to watch. We often ended up on TV Land or the Game Show network to watch a lot of the old shows because they were certainly better than the new ones. One of the programs that we watched was Leave It To Beaver, cuz I liked it. Beaver was so cute when he was still young and small and hadn't yet reached that annoyingly prepubescent stage. But the storyline of every show was pretty much the same. Beaver messes up somehow and his family helps him out of the jam. It was such a running theme that Steven and I began using "beaver" as a curse word whenever we did something dumb. Oh I knocked over the cup of water, "beaver!" I forgot to put away the milk, "beaver!" You know, stuff like that.

Sunday we had our own Leave It to Beaver episode. It's not our first and certainly won't be our last, but it was oh so typically Beaver like.

Huston got a belated birthday card in the mail a few days ago. He was at his grandma's house the day it came and then I forgot to give it to him when he returned home, so he didn't actually receive it until Sunday afternoon. (at this point of the story, I'm really hoping the card-giver is not reading this blog post...) He opened the card and found inside of it, along with the loving sentiments, a $20 bill. His eyes lit up and he immediately folded up the bill and put it in his pocket... I stopped him and suggested to him, "don't you think that it would be better to put the money in your jar?" (his money jar) so it wouldn't get lost.

(Yeah, you know what's going to happen...) He looked up at me with those big eyes and fallen face and said, "but mom, I want to hold it." Well, I thought, he did just get it. The promise was made that it would stay in his pocket. *sigh* I knew it was a bad sign when we got to Menards that afternoon and as he was heading out of the van the $20 was in his hand. Steven scolded him and personally stuffed it deep into Huston's pocket as they headed into the store. That evening when he was changing into his pajamas I asked him for the bill. He looked at me and said with a very quiet voice that he didn't know where it was. *double sigh*

The boy had the money all of 5 hours and had already lost it. Beaver. I must tell you that we handled it in typical Cleaver fashion. Steven became angry and scolded and I felt sorry for him and reacted a bit more gently. (Ward, don't you think you were a little too hard on the Beaver?) Anyway, the pain of the money lost was punishment enough and Huston will never be trusted with cash money again until he's an annoying prepubescent.

I searched the van, I searched the yard, I searched the house - no $20. The boy was every.where. when we returned from Menards. He was driving his new John Deere tractor around the place most of that evening while Isaiah and I were planting our garden and fighting allergic reactions. The silly thing could be anywhere. Maybe if we're lucky it will turn up at the very point that we need it. In the meantime we will be attempting to keep Huston off of billboards and his head out of fences so that he doesn't end up following in Beaver's footsteps in any other way.