The kid's buzzing around the house, asking to watch The Street, which of course, doesn't start for another 15 minutes. So I suggest to her, "How about if we let Elmer count down for us, and when it's fifteen minutes, he'll beep and tell us Sesame Street is starting?"
And she's all for it, so I get her to punch in 1500 into our Elmer kitchen timer from Japan.
"Good job! Now you can do something else, and when Elmer beeps..."
So it's been almost seven minutes, and the kid is still sitting on the kitchen floor, cradling Elmer and staring intently as the numbers tick down. From 14:00 to 11:00 or so, the "He's almost beeping!" was coming every 30 seconds or so. Since then, silence. Unnerving silence.
You mean Elmo?
[no way. Elmer, the ambiguously gay patchwork elephant -ed.]
Timers are a beautiful thing. The only way I can get my son to clean up his room is to set a timer and say "I bet you can't clean up this room in 5 minutes!" He really gets going then.