A couple months ago, MJ went to sit on a chair at our kitchen table and missed. I'll admit that I laughed.

"What happened, there, Charlie Brown?" I asked her. "Did Lucy pull the chair out from under you?"

She looked up at me from the floor with a goofy grin and said, "Oh, I just fell over."

The next week, she did it again -- and not for attention, mind you. She just couldn't seem to hit the mark.

At around the same time, she stopped walking down the stairs, choosing to scoot down step by step on her rear instead. Preschoolers are completely loony when they run, anyway -- all arms and legs flying about -- but when she followed the stair and chair antics by tripping over her own feet while walking down the hallway, I began to wonder what all the regression of skills was about. Had I perhaps given birth to some version of Mearth -- the space-alien son from the television show "Mork from Ork" who got younger every year instead of getting older?

It seems I have not. (Although, what a great story that would have been for an upcoming holiday party.) Some child development experts say that 3 1/2 is an age of known "disequilibrium," of a special kind of chaos and disorder in the toddler world. Kids become hesitant on stairs, seating themselves becomes a clumsy and treachorous operation and they stumble while walking as if they were adolescents growing into their bodies.

Small tornadoes of disequilibrium, in fact, seem to follow my MJ around these days. "It's phenomenal," I told my mom on the phone the other day as I watched MJ make her way through the kitchen. "She just walked past a desk, and a pile of papers scattered to the floor in her wake. She wasn't even walking fast."

Observing the consequences of her actions is kind of like being on a safari and waiting to see what an animal might do next. On the one hand, it's fascinating to watch the creature; on the other hand, what if it comes over here and starts beating on my windshield?

But here's the real problem: Much like the multiple viruses that have plagued our house this fall, MJ's disequilibrium seems to be catching. The entire family -- maybe even our house itself -- seems to have this disease.

Let's start with our paranormal digital oven. Last week, it turned itself on. I turned it off. It turned itself back on. I turned it off again, and again, it turned itself back on. So I left to go and look behind doors and in dark corners for an invisible Rachael Ray -- which, obviously, is a losing prospect, unless you keep Bill Murray and a proton pack in your broom closet. So, slightly freaked out, I stayed as far away from the kitchen as possible for several hours.

Not all our disequilibrium is of the shadowy variety, of course. Most of it is man-made. One weekend, I put away all the breakfast dishes, wiped the table, swept the kitchen floor and went upstairs to shower and dress. When I came back down, I found these things under the kitchen table: an empty orange juice carton, a dozen small bits of paper, two placemats, three varieties of Cheerios -- crushed, whole and smushy -- and a pair of baby shoes. Three cabinet doors were wide open. The milk was left out on a counter. In the powder room, the faucet was running a small but steady stream of water, and the drain was closed. Why? How did all of this happen in 20 short minutes? And under fatherly supervision?

Two weeks ago -- and twice in the same week -- I set out to go the gym and found myself in the empty parking lot of MJ's preschool instead, like a robot whose human forgot to program it correctly for the day's activities.

Another evening, I tried to climb my way out of a recliner without putting it in its upright postion and fell, face-first, onto a pile of toys on the floor. I lay there laughing for an eternity, as Randy sat on the couch and did the same.

"Why," he asked me, amused, "did you do that?" "I have no idea," was the only response I could manage as I plucked a piece of dollhouse furniture from my ear. This was the same day that MJ walked up to me while I was typing an e-mail and asked if she could "use the "puter." When I told her no, she said sweetly that I had to share it, it's good to share, and why wouldn't I share? Channeling my inner-3-year-old, I turned to her and said: "Because it's my laptop, and I don't have to share it," thus undoing weeks of the good work her preschool teacher had been doing in this area. In case you're wondering: Yes, I did later receive the "Mother of the Year" award. I placed it on my mantle next to Randy's "Father of the Year" trophy -- symbolized by the bronze figure of a man lying on the couch watching "Mythbusters," oblivious, while his children tear a napkin into a hundred tiny pieces and toss it around the room like confetti on New Year's Eve.

What I'm saying is: We've been a little off lately. I can't find any parent development books that describe the disequilibrium problem within the supposedly responsible among us, and there doesn't seem to be an immunization for it. But according to one book I read, MJ's off-balance issues should resolve themselves when she hits the nice round age of 4, and with any luck, the rest of our household's will, too. Here's hoping our oven doesn't eat us before then.

Beth appears Tuesdays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Beth at her blog MotherBunker.