700 Q-Tip Pick-Up

Has anyone ever gotten to play this game? If not, you are missing out. If you are unfamiliar with it, let me tell you about it.
The best time for this game to take place is when you are unable to really get to your toddler - say for instance you decide you HAVE to take a shower today, so you lock both yourself and your toddler in your bedroom while you take a 5 minute shower. Of course, you could get to him in a real emergency, but 700 Q-Tip Pick-up isn't an emergency - even if it is extremely annoying. So, basically while you are attempting to wash your hair and your body fast enough to prevent any other fun toddler games from happening, you realize that your very excited two year old is frantically shaking a massive Costco-size box of Q-tips all over the bathroom. Once he has completed this task, he then begins to clean out his ears with every Q-tip he can get his hands on - because he hears you making annoying empty threats from within the shower, and he knows his freedom will soon come to an end. So, the game continues even after I emerge from the shower because I am really not interested in squatting down to help him while I am unclothed and dripping with water. And now he realizes he's getting an extra three minutes of freedom, so he begins wildly running through the Q-tips to spread them out even more all over my filthy bathroom floor - which is another issue altogether.
Once I'm finally dressed, he's already had so much Q-tip fun, that it's almost impossible to really gain control of this situation - he's just so excited about his masterpiece that he's created. Because of this, it takes about half an hour to clean them all up, which he amazingly makes into another frustrating game of throwing handfuls of Q-tips into about a 3-inch opening in the box, or picking them up one by one and putting them away in slow motion. Is this kid already mocking me??
So, after way too many motherly cliche's that I thought I'd never hear myself saying, and a couple of time-outs, we both went on with our day happy that he had such a fun time with the Q-tips.

Too Many Memories?

I don't know about the rest of you parents out there, but I definitely love to capture my memories of my family on film. Whether it's pictures or video, I feel like if I don't get it on some type of film, it will probably be forgotten. Especially now with all of the editing you can do and deleting of pictures from your camera, there's no such thing as a "wasted picture" anymore. However, Gavin stays a little annoyed at me because of this.
Take for instance the picture above. I took this when Gavin and Elijah were playing a game called "camp-out" where they pretend the blanket is their tent, and they listen for animal noises. But Gavin claims that my picture taking interrupts the actual "memory" that I'm trying to capture because when Eli sees me get up and come back with a camera, he usually stops what he's doing and just wants to see the camera. But after much encouragement and hiding of the camera, I was able to convince him to go back to his camp-out with daddy. So, I can understand Gavin's point of view - I tend to mess up a lot of their time together for the sake of a Kodak moment. But, I really want those pictures because I have such a bad memory I know I'll forget all of this day-to-day stuff that goes on. And if I didn't get the camera, we wouldn't have this really cute picture of the two of them playing - is this selfish of me?
Besides, it's not all my fault either. I can't really help it that Elijah keeps his mommy radar on at all times. No matter where I am in the house, he will locate me within five seconds if he feels it is necessary. And he can sense it when I leave the room even if he can't see me because he's sitting under a blanket. It can be kind of creepy sometimes.
I think my solution is going to be to just keep taking pictures and keep filming - hopefully Elijah will just get so used to it that he won't care anymore and he'll just ignore me.
And then I'll have to figure out what to do about the fact that he ignores me.