by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
The other day I was trying to put my 3-year-old in the car, and we were in a hurry, because I wanted to get to the grocery store and back before it was time for their lunch, since you definitely DO NOT want to be caught out in public when two headstrong 3-year-olds and a 9-month-old decide they’re hungry and you’re not feeding them fast enough, because, look, we’re surrounded by food and all you have to do is BUY SOMETHING FOR THEM.
That’s a fight I didn’t want to have today. So I was doing my best to buckle the 3-year-old quickly and make sure the chest piece was positioned in the exact place it should be, because I’m all about safety, while he was more concerned with waving a book he’d found in my face.
“Look, Mama,” he kept saying over and over and over again. Wave, wave, wave.
“I’m trying to buckle you,” I said.
“But look what I found,” he said, still waving it in my face. I took the book and threw it down on the floor of the van.
“Stop putting the book in my face,” I said. “I don’t like it when you shove things in my face.”
He ignored me, of course, because he’s a 3-year-old and that’s what 3-year-olds do, and he replaced a book with his finger, which I know I just saw up his nose. It took a few impressive Matrix moves that I’m still feeling today to get out of that sticky spot, and then he was buckled and we were on our merry way, my annoyance dissipating with every mile we logged, replaced by anxiety and dread, because who in their right mind takes two 3-year-olds and a 9-month-old to a grocery store? I was totally setting myself up for failure, and I knew it.
But I distracted myself by thinking about how kids probably don’t even understand the whole concept of “I don’t like having things shoved in my face,” because they don’t realize they’re shoving a book in a face. They’re just trying to get our attention. It’s how they communicate.
I know, because I watched them after we got home from the store (which I don’t want to talk about, so don’t even ask). The two 3-year-olds were talking to each other, and one would hold a train right up into the face of the other one and say, “I want this one. Do you want this one?” Twin 1 was trying to pick a fight, but Twin 2 wasn’t taking the bait, mostly because he couldn’t see the train that was right up in his face. It was too close. So he just ignored it and said, “No,” and went right on playing.
There are so many things that kids don’t understand. Take, for instance, the “please don’t put your stinky feet on me.”
First of all, kids don’t even know what stinky smells like. They sort of know stinky when it comes to things like farts and skunk smell and food they don’t like, but when it comes to anything connected to their body, stinky is not a word in their vocabulary. They will come in from playing outside in the middle of a Texas summer and smell like a whole pasture full of cows and dung and the dog that was dispatched to round up all the strays that need milking, even though we don’t live anywhere near cows. They will fight to the death about taking a bath, no matter how many times we tell them that the smell they keep looking around trying to find is actually them.
Every night at dinner, the 9-year-old, without even thinking, will put his stinky feet that have been trapped inside his tennis shoes all day, on my legs. All over them, actually. He moves them up and down and side to side, because he has trouble sitting still after all that over-stimulation at school. I can practically see the fumes swirling up from his black socks with the neon green toes, and those fumes get to be rubbed all over my legs. Just what I wanted.
He does it because he’s not thinking and because he loves me, but THIS IS NOT LOVE. Trust me. It’s dinnertime, and all I can smell is Fritos mixed with pinto beans and really aged cheese, even though what we’re having is salmon with salad.
Kids also don’t understand things like “Please give me some personal space,” because what is personal space to kids? They will touch me and prod me and lean into me and not think twice about it. They will stand so close to me I’ll trip over them on my way to get some requested milk. They will fall all over each other and think it’s hilarious instead of annoying. They will cling to my legs on the walk to school, and then, when they’ve disappeared from my view because there’s a baby strapped to my frontside, they will stop, and my Matrix move skills will be tested once more as I try to stop myself from falling, and I’ll be sore for another month.
“I would like to go to bed” is probably the most misunderstood phrase in our house. To our kids, this means, “I would like you to come into our room a thousand times seeking extra hugs and kisses and to especially tell us in no less than 1,000 words what your brother just did to you.” Just when we’re falling into dreamland and it’s looking like the most beautiful place we’ve ever seen, someone will knock on our door with something important to tell us, like how he thinks that tomorrow is crazy sock day and he doesn’t have any crazy socks, so can he borrow some, and it will take us five more hours to get back to sleep.
“I would like to go to bed” is also code for “You can totally get out of your bed and take all the books down from the library shelves,” if you’re asking our 3-year-old twins, which is why we use a locking doorknob installed backwards on their room and lock them in it at night, because 3-year-olds roaming the house at night is scarier than that freaky doll Chucky coming for a visit with his eyes that never blink.
“Chew with your mouth closed” looks like a 3-year-old trying to figure out how in the world you’re supposed to chew food when you close your mouth, looking confusedly at all his brothers who have mastered the talent and then, after rolling the food around his mouth with his tongue, opting to swallow it whole so he chokes on a stump of unchewed broccoli.
“You’re not hungry; you’re just bored,” gets me tagged as the “worst mother ever.” And “That’s not in our budget right now” results in a boy fetching my wallet, pulling out a credit card and saying, “Then use this,” reminding me that I need to teach him about responsible use of credit cards, because society’s claws are thick.
So maybe things get a little lost in translation, but the truth is I’m kind of glad. Because it’s those times I feel really annoyed that a kid is waving something in my face and I’ve already asked him to stop once that I remember how these are all places where I get to consider things from their point of view and I get to remember what it was like to be a kid and I get to take a deep, long breath and hope I’m breathing in patience and not more boiling annoyance. And then I get to be a good mother who teaches and directs and walks them toward a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
But, seriously, if you don’t get your stinky feet off me…
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test featured, Crash Test Parents, General Blog
There’s this school of thought that really bothers me. It shakes fingers at us and says that if we think parenting is hard or we feel like giving up on a daily or hourly or minute-by-minute basis or we, God forbid, wish our kids would be different, less difficult people for a fleeting moment in time, then we probably shouldn’t have become parents in the first place.
It’s a lie.
It’s a dangerous lie, too, one that keeps us locked in chains as parents, because that’s when we start looking around at all those people who make it look so easy, who make it look as though they’re enjoying every single minute of every single in-the-trenches hour, and we can think that we are somehow deficient in our parenting abilities.
You know what the easy part of parenting is? Making it look easy.
You know what the hard part of parenting is? Every other second.
Parenting is hard. You’ll never hear me say it’s easy. It’s hard because I work really hard at it. And, also, nothing worthwhile was ever easy.
I fail every single day at this parenting gig. Every single day. Sometimes that failing looks like yelling because the 3-year-olds just poured a whole package of brand new crayons out on the table and broke 26 of them in half before I could even get to them, even though I just got done telling them to leave the crayons alone until their brothers got home. Sometimes that failing looks like speaking more sharply than I intended to the 8-year-old because I just warned him not to swing the broom like that, and he decided to do it anyway, and he broke a light. Sometimes it looks like standing in a kitchen and crying without being able to say why I’m crying, just knowing there are two many voices and too many words and too many needs knocking all at once, and it’s overwhelmingly suffocating.
But I will never pretend I don’t fail, because it’s not true. I will never pretend that parenting my six boys is not hard, because it’s not true. The world is not served by facades and pretty little pictures and perfect little examples. The world is served by imperfection and being brave enough to bare it.
So, yeah, parenting feels hard to me. It’s not because I don’t love my children. I love them with a love that is great and deep and wild enough to gouge out whole parts of me that never belonged. They are precious and wonderful and most of all beloved.
Parenting feels hard because I’m trying, every day, to be better at it than I was yesterday. It feels hard because we’re all people and we’re all imperfect and we are living and growing together in ways that can grind and carve and shape. It feels hard because these are tiny little humans we’re talking about, tiny little humans who will one day become men and women, and we get to shepherd them into that, and it is a giant, humbling, magnanimous task. A privilege. But a mountain of responsibility.
I don’t take it lightly.
I would venture to say that if parenting feels easy every second of every day, if there is never a moment where we feel like locking ourselves in a bathroom for just a breath or 50 of them, if we never wish, for that tiny split of a split-second, that they would be different people, we are probably doing it wrong.
The best parts of life demand hard work and dedication and perseverance, and the things most worth doing will, at any moment in time, feel hard. That’s how I know I’m on the right track as a parent.
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For me, parenting feels hard every time my 8-year-old forgets how he’s been taught to handle his anger and lashes out with hands instead of words, because he’s always been a gifted kid whose emotional development lags behind others his age and we’ve worked really, really hard trying to walk him toward a place of control and knowledge and healthy expression of all the emotions, not just the good ones, and sometimes it just feels like a losing battle. It feels hard when I remember what a brilliant and kind and loving little boy he is and how much good he has the potential to blast into the world, if only he didn’t have this one little thing. It feels hard when I see that school number on my cell, and I wonder if it’s him they’re calling about.
Parenting feels hard every time the 3-year-olds eat a tube of toothpaste and leave the evidence on the counter, because I have to choose not to yell and use my words in ways that will honor and teach and show grace and love even in this discipline moment that’s happened a billion times already. It feels hard when the 6-year-old wakes up on a school morning and barfs all over the Hot Wheels the 3-year-olds dumped out, not just because now it means cleaning all of that up, but also because no mother wants to see her baby sick. It feels hard every time the 5-year-old comes home from school and talks about how one of the boys in his class was mean to him on the playground, because then I just want to throat punch the bullying kid, but I have to talk to my boy about how the people who choose to bully often don’t know any better and need to be shown a better way of making friends, and he’s the one who will have to do it, because he will have to do this brave and kind and world-changing work.
Parenting feels hard when they forget who they are. It’s hard because I love so much, because I want to order their worlds just so, because I want to make their decisions for them, because I don’t want to sit by and watch those consequences break their hearts, but I have to, because it’s the only way they’ll learn and grow and stumble back to who they are.
Sometimes I don’t feel up to this task. Sometimes I don’t feel equipped. Sometimes I want to give up, but I also know that I’m a fighter. I persevere. I keep going. Which is kind of the point of all this parenting in the trenches—to show us what we’re made of. And you know what? I’m made of some pretty tough stuff.
So, no, I’m not going to suck it up, buttercup, because I have discovered something else in my eight years with these delightful little boys. Parenting is hard because I’m doing it right. Because I fail. Because they fail. Because we keep going, all of us together, along the road toward wholehearted living.
There is nothing greater in the world than this.
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test featured, Crash Test Parents, General Blog
A few weeks ago I got a text from my sister, who had her third baby in February. The text said, “Tell me you have days when you just can’t handle it. When walking out of the house is all you can do to survive. I just need to hear it from another human.”
I laughed out loud, even though I knew she was dead serious. And in my head were responses like “every damn day” and “just this morning” and “on a minute-by-minute basis.”
Parenting is hard. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I used to run six miles every morning in 10,000-pound humidity before commuting an hour to downtown’s Houston Chronicle office. I used to marathon-train on 10 miles of hills pushing a double baby stroller that carried a 4-year-old and a 3-year-old. I used to work for a narcissist.
Parenting is still the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
There are so many hours of my day that I just feel like giving up and hitch-hiking to downtown San Antonio’s Riverwalk, where Husband and I had a life before children—a life that didn’t include a panic attack every time a kid steps too close to the edge of the path and I imagine having to jump into that dirty black water to save him.
Like the morning last week, when the 3-year-old twins went outside into our very safe (normally) backyard while I transferred a load of laundry from the washing machine to the dryer. Two minutes, tops. That’s all it took. By the time I finished, one of the twins had come back inside, and the whole house smelled like gasoline.
“Why does the house smell like gasoline?” I said, to no one in particular. The twin looked at me. I looked at him. He had his guilty eyes on.
“What were you doing out there?” I said.
“Nuffing,” he said.
I knew it was definitely something, because of those guilty eyes. A mom always knows, after all.
His twin brother came in smelling like a gas pump, so I looked out on the deck, where they didn’t even have the foresight to hide what they’d been doing. There, on a deck chair, was their daddy’s gas can used to fill up the lawn mower the three times a year he mows. That gas can is stored behind a locked door. A locked and sealed door that somehow, SOMEHOW, these Dennis the Menaces had cracked open in less than two minutes.
They poured gasoline (less than half a gallon, for those who are concerned) all over the back deck, the grass and themselves. It’s a good thing no one in my house smokes, because we all would have been blown to high heaven.
I put them both in the bath (which was not on the schedule for the morning) while the baby stayed downstairs in his jumper seat wailing because he doesn’t like to be alone, and washed them, rinsed them, scrubbed them, rinsed them and washed them again. Husband sprayed off the deck (which also wasn’t on the schedule for the morning) and saturated all the grass, because a Texas summer hits 4,000 degrees, and we were afraid the sun might make the gasoline-drenched grass spontaneously combust and blow us all to high heaven anyway.
That morning was one of those give-up days, because there’s no way to be one step ahead in my house. There’s no way I can fully toddler-proof every room. There’s no way I can keep them out of every single thing they find to amuse themselves. It would take 23 of me.
That morning I wanted to walk out and let them fend for themselves in gasoline scented clothes that spread their stench all over the house in less than two seconds.
I used to feel guilty when feelings like this crept up. I used to beat myself up for sometimes wishing that they just weren’t twins, that there weren’t two of them ALL THE DANG TIME, that they weren’t so insatiably curious and 3 years old and nearly impossible to parent right now.
But there is something important I’ve learned in my years of parenting: Just because there are moments when we want to run away, when we want to flat-out give up, when we want to trade our kids for easier kids for just this little moment in time so we can catch up and learn to appreciate them again, it doesn’t mean that we don’t still love them with a love that is never-ending.
These little, irrational humans can be the best and worst people we know on any given day at any given moment.
There are days when I want to sit down and color next to my 3-year-olds, because they’ve just been playing so well together and the morning’s disasters have been minimal, and, gosh, I just love them so much, and then there are mornings when I want to put them on Craig’s list’s free page (I’d have to lie to really sell the idea, though. Something like “Two well behaved twins, of undetermined age.” Because what kind of crazy person would want two 3-year-olds voluntarily?)
There are hours when I love to comb through those old picture albums that show these two hooked up to machines because they were premature and remember how I fretted and cried and tried my best to help them learn how to eat, and there are days when those first moments feel like entire lifetimes apart from this moment, when they stuck their whole arm in the just-used toilet to see what poop floating in pee feels like (They already know. We’ve done this drill before.).
There are minutes when I pull them into my lap and kiss all over their faces until they’re giggling uncontrollably, because they’re getting so big and so fun, and then there are minutes when I’m half-heartedly holding their big brother away from them so he doesn’t clobber them for marking all over his journal with a giant red permanent marker they found lying around somewhere (who keeps giving us permanent markers? Please stop.).
Parenting is not for the weak. This is the hardest responsibility we will ever have in our lives. Raising another human being to be a decent person is not easy, and there are many times along our journeys when we will feel like giving up and giving in and giving out.
It just comes with the territory.
So I fire off my response to my sweet sister. “Yes,” I say. “Just about every day. Doesn’t mean you’re a bad mother.”
Because it doesn’t.
These moments when we feel the tension between wanting to give up and knowing we can’t make us stronger parents. They make us better people. They drag us into a deeper understanding of love.
Good thing, too. Because my toddler just figured out how to open a can of paint Husband left unguarded and now the pantry wall has a Thermal Spring scribble-masterpiece drying on it.
I’m going to be one amazing person by the time this is all over.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
We can learn a lot from kids. But sometimes their teaching is hit or miss. Like in the example below, which are all lessons I’ve learned from my kids.
How to put on your shoes:
1. Try for 10 seconds.
2. Cry.
3. Throw the shoe.
4. Ask your mom.
Lesson learned from: a 3-year-old in velcro shoes.
How to break your camera
1. Take it to the zoo.
2. Don’t listen when your parents say, “You should put it in your pocket.”
3. Drop it.
Lesson learned from: the 9-year-old who likes to do things his own way…and reap the consequences (well, he doesn’t like that part so much.)
How to sweep a floor
1. Get the broom.
2. Wave it around at the ceiling.
3. Hit a light.
4. Done. (Now your dad has to sweep up the glass.)
Lesson learned from: the 9-year-old who either didn’t hear us telling him to stop swinging the broom or who thought it really wouldn’t hurt to defy our instructions.
How to drive someone crazy
1. Tell them to “guess what.”
2. Make them actually guess.
3. Seriously, don’t tell them the answer until they guess.
Lesson learned from: the 7-year-old, who is a master at the guessing game, because there are no clues.
How to have a serious conversation:
1. Look at the person.
2. Pretend you’re listening.
3. Do whatever you want anyway.
Lesson learned from: a stubborn 4-year-old.
How to find a missing shoe
1. Stand in your room.
2. Look at the walls.
3. Complain that you don’t see them anywhere.
4. Ask a parent.
Lesson learned from: the 5-year-old who must have something wrong with his eyes.
How to flush a toilet:
1. Unload your bowels.
2. Forget to flush.
3. Tell your parent it smells gross in the house.
4. Totally don’t get the irony.
Lesson learned from: five potty-trained boys.
How to talk quietly
1. Yell.
2. Keep yelling until someone says use your inside voice.
3. Use your “inside voice” to yell and tell them this is your inside voice.
4. Keep yelling.
Lesson learned from: both 4-year-olds. Their whisper is also a yell. I’ve never heard anyone whisper so loudly.
How to read a book
1. Open.
2. Read.
3. Remember you’re hungry.
4. Put the book down.
5. Eat five pounds of bananas.
6. Forget about the book.
Lesson learned from: the 7-year-old who doesn’t know when to stop.
How to cook a dinner they’ll all like
1. Just order pizza.
Lesson learned from: six boys complaining about what’s for dinner before they’ve even tried it.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Every now and then Husband and I will treat our boys with a Family Movie Night. Usually this happens on a Friday, because boys don’t have to get up for school the next morning, and we can all take our time getting to bed once the movie’s done.
Sometimes Husband and I will sit on the couch and snuggle with our boys during the movie. Sometimes we’ll take the opportunity to catch up on a bit of work that needs doing, while the boys laugh their way through the newest Pixar or DeamWorks release. This means that sometimes our boys get to watch a movie before we do.
The most recent movie our boys watched without us was The Good Dinosaur. Husband and I were trying to get ready for a book launch, so we sat in the kitchen while our boys crowded on the couch and asked for popcorn. By the way they laughed through much of the movie, I knew it was one I wanted to see.
So, another week, we sat down to watch it with them.
We settled onto our couch, and I tired to ignore the elbow that was jabbing into my side, but it didn’t take me long to forget that annoyance in light of another. It soon became quite clear that I would not be able to watch The Good Dinosaur without a running commentary from all three of our older boys.
“Don’t worry. This isn’t where he dies, Mama,” one of the boys said early on in the movie, in a particularly tense part where a dinosaur is trying to outrun a storm. “He dies in another place.”
Well, thanks for letting me know he dies at all. I appreciate the spoiler.
Not only would they spoil just about every tense scene in the movie, but they would also insert things like, “Watch this,” as if we weren’t already watching the screen, and “This is a funny part,” as if we wouldn’t know we were supposed to laugh, and “he’s not very nice,” as if we couldn’t figure it out for ourselves.
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They would explain jokes to us and tell us what was happening or would happen and introduce the characters before they’d introduced themselves on the screen, and it was like having my own personal narrator, which would have been nice if I were visually impaired, but I could see the screen just fine, and the only thing my kids’ commentary did was make it really hard to hear what was said during the movie.
I get it. The boys had already seen the movie, and they remembered every part where they felt a little afraid or a little sad or a little concerned. They didn’t want us to go through the discomfort of all that. They didn’t want us to feel as shocked as they did when someone died or as sad as they did when someone remembers the someone who died. It’s sweet, when you think about it.
It’s just that I’d like to watch a movie, please. I’d like to enjoy the tension of not really knowing what’s going to happen. I’d like to hear the dialogue the first time it’s executed. I’d like to be surprised now and then.
But I guess I do sort of get to be surprised, because I remember that, at one point, a boy said, “There’s another storm coming,” so I was waiting, on the edge of my seat, to see if someone else gets hurt in a storm, and it turns out the storm wasn’t coming for another forty-five minutes. So I got to sit on the edge of my seat for forty-five minutes. There’s nothing like sitting on the edge of your seat for forty-five minutes, let me tell you. I got a ridge line in my cheeks I was clenching so hard.
Still, at the end of the day, I have to admit that watching a movie with my boys is one of the best things about being a family. To have a seventy-five-pound kid crawl into your lap because this part makes him a little nervous is priceless. To have a 4-year-old snot your leg when he doesn’t want to get up to get a tissue because he doesn’t “want to miss this part” is priceless. To have a 5-year-old whisper in your ear that the dinosaur makes it back to his family in the end (whoops. Sorry about that. Spoiler alert!) is priceless.
If anyone needs an aid for the visually impaired, I learned that my boys are quite proficient a play-by-plays. They’re so good at it, in fact, that by the end of the movie, I became good at something, too: The Art of Not Listening to My Children. For those of you who haven’t learned how to do this yet, I just sort of turned off the ear that was facing a boy sitting next to me. They didn’t seem to notice, because the drone in my right ear kept right on buzzing.
I also figured out that this is the very same skill I use when the 9-year-old starts talking about Pokemon.
The things you learn during Family Movie Night. Priceless.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
The other afternoon I was sitting in our library reading a book, because it has a direct line to my 3-year-old twins’ room, and they’re not traditionally great nappers.
I guess they didn’t know I was watching, because one of them was hanging from his top bunk like a monkey, trying to swing into his brother’s bottom bunk. The other was laughing hysterically.
“Get back in your bed,” I said, startling him so much he lost his grip and crashed to the floor.
“You scared me,” he shouted as he was climbing back up the steps to his bed.
I didn’t feel sorry for him, though, because how many times have I told him not to hang off the side of the bed like that? At least twenty billion.
There is something I’ve noticed about my boys. When they think they can get away with something—not because they’ve gotten away with it before, ever, but because they think someone’s just not paying attention—they will do it.
It’s easy to understand in a house with so many kids and so few parent eyes, but there’s something they haven’t quite figured out.
This mom sees and knows everything.
So, in the interest of helping them out with this hard-to-understand mystery, I’ve compiled an easy-to-read list of everything a mom knows.
1. I know what you’re doing, even if I can’t see you.
Call it eyes on the back of my head, call it intuition, call it whatever you want. I know. I know that when you go to the bathroom, you are probably going to play with the plunger because you’ve done it six thousand times before. I know that when you go upstairs (and I know when you do), you will head straight for Daddy’s forbidden computer and that your inexperienced fingers will close out PhotoShop, along with the latest project your daddy forgot to save, on your way to Cool Math.
I know that when you think you escaped unnoticed from the house, you will immediately run toward the neighbor’s rock path you’ve been told not to touch. I know that when you disappear into the pantry, you are looking for the raisins, because they’re still spilled on the floor from the last time you tried, unsuccessfully, to sneak a snack three minutes after you’d eaten your lunch—which included your weight in watermelon. I know that if you beat me to the library by half a second there will already be fifty books scattered on the floor that you’ll try to hide by shoving them all under the couch.
I know.
2. I know you don’t think I’m paying attention, but I am. Always.
When that phone call comes through and you think my attention is split, you should know that I’m still paying attention.
I know what you’re doing on the stairs because I can hear the footfalls leading up to the baby gate you’ll dismantle in three seconds. I know the sound of the closet door opening means you think you can sneak Battleship from its hiding place and dump out those red and white pieces without getting caught.
I know that because it seems like I’m paying full attention to the phone conversation and not at all to you, you will try to get a cup out of the dishwasher and fill it with water you’ll spill three steps from the water dispenser, even though I gave you milk in your Thermos sixty seconds ago.
I know.
3. I know as soon as I leave the room you will think about doing what you’ve been told not to do.
I know that if I go upstairs to get your baby brother, you will try to take the lid off that LEGO container Daddy left on the counter so you can scatter the pieces into a land mine before I get back (and if you can’t get the lid off you will destroy the container).
I know that as soon as I go to the bathroom you will climb onto the table and steal that crayon you wanted from your brother. I know that as soon as I disappear to put your baby brother down for a nap you will open the refrigerator and try to stuff as many grapes as you can get into your mouth before I get back.
I know what’s in your mouth and the toy you snuck up to your bed for some naptime fun and the thing you’re thinking about right this minute.
4. I know quiet doesn’t always (hardly ever?) mean good.
I know that sometimes it means you’re coloring your carpet red with a crayon you found hidden in the cushions of the couch. I know it means you have unraveled the whole roll of eco-friendly paper towels because you wanted to make a paper bag for your cars. I know it means you’re probably trying to fit into a shirt for a six-month-old, even though you’re 3. Your quiet isn’t fooling me at all.
I know all of this mostly because
5. I know you.
I know your adventurous spirit that catapults you out the door and halfway down the road before your daddy and I can even get out of the kitchen. I know your creativity that turns a door into a canvas. I know your curiosity that puts a cup with a car submerged in water into the freezer to see what happens.
I know your playful nature that sees everything—a plunger, a roll of paper towels, butter knives—like it’s a new toy. I know how hard it is to tame the strong will that sees a challenge in every don’t-do-it.
I know you, all the wild and all the crazy and all the most beautiful pieces, too.
And guess what? I love it all.
But next time you decide to see what happens when you put a balloon in the toilet and try to pee on it, just remember, you will be caught. I promise.
A mom always knows.
So don’t even think about it.
