Pack Man

Judah has started wearing a 10 lb backpack all day long.

And when I say "all day long", I literally mean from the moment he wakes up to the moment he sleeps at night. In fact, the backpack sits right at the side of his bed, waiting to burden Judah at first light.

This is pre-backpack era, but you can already see the seeds of crazy are there.

It started when he got a simple Spiderman 'rope' sack as a birthday gift a couple months ago. He put all his most treasured possessions in there (basically all his TNMT stationary plus scissors) and carried it around everywhere. The problem was he kept adding to it. And adding to it. And adding to it. Until the rope eventually left burn marks on his shoulders.

Well, thinking it was quite serendipitous at the time, I picked up a new Spiderman backpack with nicely padded shoulder-straps at Costco last week, and Judah immediately ditched his rope-burn sack for the cushy new pack.

Problem was, the new backpack is huge. It's sized for a normal elementary school age child. Crap.

Judah already had hoarding tendencies with his tiny rope sack, but now it's become a full-fledged disease. Not only is there stationary in there (notepads, pencil cases, folders, etc.) there is now a full-on superhero costume (plus weapons), crafting materials of all kinds, books, random toys, and God knows what else.

And did I mention it weighs 10 lbs and he refuses to take it off? All. Day. Long?

Often he's running around the house with just undies and his backpack on. Because, of course, everything else is optional.

Doesn't everyone drink smoothies in their kitchen with a giant backpack on? No?

When I try to reason with Judah he just says stuff like, It's not too heavy for me. I like wearing it. It feels good, mommy!

I do not know how to argue with that kind of subjective crazy.

But seriously, how do I get him to take that stupid thing off?!