by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
We have this fancy chalkboard hanging in our kitchen with “This Night” written in wannabe hand lettering, because I’m nothing more than a wannabe artist. Beneath those words, we have each of the boys’ names and their subsequent chores listed. Those chores change every week, although if you ask our boys, they’re always on wipe-the-table duty, because it only takes 30 seconds to flick a sponge around and dump food scraps on the floor.
We’re diligent about teaching our boys how to do chores, because one day they will be married, and they need to know how to do things like sweep the floor and load a dishwasher (or whatever nifty invention is around then) and wipe down counters until they’re squeaky clean (no, that’s squeaky clean, kids. Not sticky clean.) so their significant other can take a little break every now and then. Also so we can get a break for the next eighteen years, but that’s not really the point. Okay, it is.
Normally doing the chores looks like the 3-year-old putting the silverware in the dishwasher tray and pouring the liquid soap and closing it and pushing start, but not getting to touch anything else (because glass in 3-year-old hands is like a death sentence. Also, speaking of a death sentence, you should make sure there’s not a butcher knife in the silverware tray, because even if it’s already safe and snug in its place, that 3-year-old will pull it back out. “Not here, Mama. Here,” he’ll say, waving it like he’s writing the ABCs in the air. Except he doesn’t know how to write letters yet. So he’s really just passively aggressively threatening you for all those times you took the plunger away from him even though it’s his favorite toy that’s most definitely not a toy.).
“Doing chores” looks like the other 3-year-old singing while he’s wiping down the table, which really just means he’s sweeping all the leftover food (because boys eat like raccoons) onto the floor the 5-year-old is complaining about sweeping. It looks like a 6-year-old “wiping off counters” by maneuvering the sponge around all the papers they unloaded from their school folders and spread all over the available surface space so there’s really nothing at all to wipe.
And then there is the 8-year-old on trash duty.
When this boy is on trash duty, I regret all the times I talked to him about environmental issues like saving water and recycling everything we can recycle and not wasting energy by leaving lights on. The only thing he heard was…nothing. He read in a book somewhere that most trash can be reused, and this is his mantra:
Everything can be reused.
(Because he likes absolutes.)
This mantra is a little overly simple, to my mind. I remind him of this every time he’s brushing his teeth and walks out of the bathroom with the water faucet still running because he’s thinking about how he could reuse his toothbrush and all his brothers’ to make a little toothbrush family with drawn-on faces and homemade clothes and handmade arms and how about we get started right now. I remind him every time I run upstairs before we leave for school and four lights are blazing because he was trying to find that one book to show me what someone made out of old shoes. I remind him every time I throw something away and it ends up back on my bed.
Take, for instance, the baby’s old pacifiers. Pacifiers are pretty gross. These things have been through five boys, and the last baby decided he didn’t like them, so we thought we’d just toss all the old ones. I didn’t really want to give them away because five boys and all that slobber—who in the world would want them? I tossed them all in my bathroom trash can and thought I was done with that.
Imagine my surprise when I wanted to go to bed and there were four pacifiers staring at me from my pillow.
“What in the world?” I said, to no one in particular.
“Oh. Those pacifiers can be reused,” said the 8-year-old, who always seems to be behind me, even if it’s time for lights out.
“I threw them away for a reason,” I said. “I do not want to reuse your old pacifiers.” I then explained that we didn’t want to pass the old pacifiers along to another family when they had already been used by him and four of his brothers, because sometimes people can be a little weird about that kind of thing, since pacifiers go in boys’ mouths and, if the twins have anything to say about it, other unmentionable places.
“Then I’ll take them,” he said. He held out his hand.
“I don’t want old pacifiers all over the place. We’re already fighting a losing battle with tidying up,” I said, because I’m a positive person like that. “And we’re not having any other babies.”
“I know,” my boy said. “But I can use them to make something.”
And he did. He made a pacifier yo-yo that lasted all of three days before he got tired of playing with it.
When the environmentalist is on trash duty, we can’t throw anything away. The leftover food scraps can always be used to feed the birds out back. The plastic strawberry cartons can be used to hold cloth napkins and keep random things organized (just get out of my house, random things. I don’t even want you here.). The old socks with holes in them can be reused for cleaning cloths—except they’re my infant’s socks that the 3-year-olds cut holes in and are about as big as my thumb. I guess I can…clean the baseboards. With one finger. And an old infant sock.
I’ve come up to my room to find old makeup boxes and papers I no longer need and soap-scummed shampoo bottles lying on my bed because he thinks I can “find a way to reuse them if I just think hard enough.” Problem is, I don’t really have much of a brain left to think outside the box, because children are like zombies except way cuter, so you don’t suspect that all they really want to do is eat your brain out.
I know I should be glad he cares. But when you’re slipping into bed and find an old pair of mangled underwear because he saw it in your trash can and decided you probably needed it and didn’t really mean to throw it away, and you know exactly what the skivvies were touching in the trash, I think it’s time to close up the environmentalist shop.
But the thing is, I don’t want to squash that spirit. Because the way he can so clearly see something new out of something old is a great quality to have. It doesn’t happen for all of us, and many of us lose that ability, anyway, when we become practical adults and too much stuff is a very real thing. Right now, he loves seeing what he can do to create something new and fun out of something old and worn. This is valuable experience he’s getting with play and invention and creativity. I don’t want to discourage that.
I also don’t want to try to imagine what I could possibly do with my old Physician’s Formula organic mascara tube that you’d never be able to clean out. Just get rid of it, son. Trust me. That thing will start smelling worse than your feet in six months.
So we’ve reached a compromise. As long as his reclaimed items have a place, he can keep them. As long I’ve put something in the trash, he’s not allowed to put it back on my bed with his “imagine what else it could be” challenge.
It’s working, for now. At least until the next time I throw away a pair of blown-out-soles shoes and he decides we can probably figure out a way to use all that rubber for something like a homemade Honda Odyssey tire. Which is just around the corner, I’m sure.
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 | Messy Mondays
I’ve never really cared much about Independence Day—not because I’m not incredibly grateful to all the people who fought for my freedom—but because here, in Texas, Independence Day falls right smack dab in the middle of a time when the air outside boils up to a thousand degrees before the sun even comes up, and we’re all just about done with summer, except we have about six more months of it.
I have a kid who has a birthday four days after Independence Day, and that was a delightful pregnancy, let me tell you. I begged my husband to let us move somewhere cooler that year. Like maybe Antarctica. But, obviously, I couldn’t travel to another continent when I was eight months pregnant, so, instead, I lounged indoors, where the air conditioner rattled to keep up, and poured my sweat all over the couch, hoping the sauna would somehow induce labor. It didn’t.
As we were nearing this day, which is about the time when I start planning for my son’s birthday party, I thought about what it would be like to have a Parents’ Independence Day. I considered what freedom would mean to parents.
Husband and I get a little taste of this every now and then, when our parents take the kids for a weekend. And here’s what I’ve noticed about what freedom from children looks like:
Getting in the car, starting it and accomplishing rubber to road within a minute, start to finish.
As it is, it when Husband and I announce to the kids that it’s time to leave, it generally takes us another half an hour (if we’re lucky) to get out the door, because someone will misplace the shoes he had on two seconds ago, someone will decide he needs to drop a load (and it’s always the one who takes twenty minutes to finish and ten more minutes to wipe—with half the toilet paper roll), someone will slip on a banana peel his brother threw down on the driveway (because it’s biodegradable!) and face plant into the hood of the car—a damage hit that will need a giant Band-Aid across his face to staunch the bleeding (which really isn’t bad. He thinks it’s worse than it is)—someone will play musical chairs with all the empty seats in the van instead of just getting in his own, and someone else will realize he forgot to put on underwear.
Going to bed whenever you want.
I didn’t appreciate this enough before I was a parent. I just went to bed and didn’t think about the fact that there could be someone waiting just outside the door, breathing underneath the crack (because I locked said door), trying to let me know that his brother stole his blanket and he doesn’t want any of the four others that are already on his bed. And no amount of ignoring him will make him go away. He’s like the worst imaginary friend, because he’s not imaginary.
Sleeping in on the weekends.
Even though, when my boys are in school, they rarely get out of bed even when I wake them up at 6:30, during the summer and on weekends, they’re sure to be up by 5:45 at the latest. I just try to pretend I don’t hear the noise of feet. But anxiety usually pulls me from bed, whether I like it or not, because I know what happens when my boys are unaccompanied for any amount of time. Someone will try to fly off the top of the van with a kite strapped to him (even though he saw his brother get mangled yesterday for the same thing) or challenge his brother to a duel with steak knives or pour himself a giant bowl of oats with milk and leave it for the flies.
A perfectly tidy house.
I don’t know if my house was ever perfectly tidy, honestly. I have a Husband, after all. And also a me. I’ve been known to put a book down somewhere and lose it in the stacks that follow me everywhere.
Eating in peace, while it’s still hot.
It never fails. I bring out some leftovers from a date night with Husband, and the kids are immediately circling me like scavengers. “Can I have a bite?” they’ll say.
“No,” I’ll say.
“Why not?” they’ll say, their faces falling into their saddest pout ever.
“Because it’s mine,” I’ll say.
“You’re mean,” they’ll say.
“That’s right. I am,” I’ll say, because I’ll do whatever it takes to eat my ziti al forno in peace. I deserve this.
Cooking for two.
I don’t even remember what this looks like. That’s probably why, when Husband and I send the kids off for a quiet weekend, we mostly eat out. Because how do you cook for two when you’re used to cooking for a small army? And, perhaps even more importantly, how do you enjoy a salad without someone complaining about it for you?
Silence.
I love silence. I love sitting in a room and hearing nothing but my own thoughts. It doesn’t happen often, because someone at my house is always talking. Usually at least four at a time. I get to the end of a day with my boys, and there are so many words stuffed up in my head that I feel like I might explode. Just the other day, I told the 9-year-old that I was on word overload and just needed a few minutes of quiet, and he said, “Well, you haven’t exploded yet” and kept right on talking about the next stop motion movie he was going to make—which is super cool, but words. So many words.
I know these freedoms seem really nice on the outside, but, truthfully, by the time a weekend without my boys ends, I’m ready to get them all back, because there’s something about silence and easy road trips and eating in peace that feels a little eerie now. I’m glad for the madness that kids bring to my life, because it’s not the freedom that matters so much as the living. And my boys show me how to live every moment of every day—by “accidentally” throwing dodge balls at my face and sneaking bites of my date-night leftovers when I get up to pour myself a drink (it’s just water, I promise) and gathering the wildflowers in the front yard, which they’ll try to put in my hair, dirty roots and all.
My boys have shown me how to play, how to dream, how to love. They have freed me in a million ways.
So my Independence Day? It happened when I had kids.
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.
[Tweet “Watching a movie with kids is like having your own personal narrator, complete with spoilers.”]
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 | Messy Mondays
You know that scene in Cinderella where she’s in the kitchen trying to get things ready for the day, and on the wall there’s this collection of bells ringing incessantly, signaling that people who are depending on her (mostly because they’re lazy) need things? Every morning, my kitchen fills with its own chorus of little bells, too, except those bells are walking around in the form of two 3-year-olds, a 5-year-old, a 6-year-old and an 8-year-old, and I can’t just simply leave the room to get away from their clanging, because they have legs and will follow me to the edge of the world without asking any questions about where I’m going.
“Mama!” the 5-year-old will say in the whiniest voice I’ve ever heard (and that’s saying a lot. I’ve really cleaned up my act.). “I can’t find my shoes.”
He’s not even out of bed yet, so I’m pretty sure he hasn’t even attempted “looking,” which I put in quotations because “looking” for a 5-year-old consists of sometimes seeing what’s right in front of his face, sometimes not. He just tripped over one of those missing shoes, and he still hasn’t found them.
His bell is followed up closely by one of the twins saying, “Mama, my brudder beat me down the stairs.” If only I could turn back time.
Followed, almost in the same breath, by his twin brother saying, “Mama, I firsty. I need milk, Mama. Mama, I need milk. I firsty, Mama” without even the slightest pause so that I can let him know that his milk is already on the table if he would just “look.”
“Where’s my blue folder?” the 8-year-old will say, even though I’m not the one in charge of his blue folder and there’s a designated place for it and I can see it sticking out from that designated place right his very minute.
“Oh! I forgot (fill in the blank),” the 6-year-old says on a regular basis. Usually that fill-in-the-blank looks something like forgetting that he’s VIP student this week and he needs to bring a poster with pictures of himself and his family on it so that all the other students will know who he is and what he wants to be when he grows up. Or forgetting that he’s supposed to have his book club book finished today, and he still has 75 pages to read. Or forgetting that there was a birthday party he was invited to this weekend, and he didn’t get to go, and how can we possibly keep track of all this?
Get me a drink, I hungry, I can’t find my shoes, where’s my library book, please hold me just because, help me, carry me, push in my chair, where’s my folder, sign my papers, I’m cold, I’m hot, I’m hungry, I need my vitamins, bring me my blanket, where’s my backpack, can you turn on the light, I need more toilet paper, I want more, More, MORE.
With all these children and all their constant demands, sometimes I start feeling a little like Cinderella, except I’m a mama. Cinder-Mama. It’s like the fairy tale I always wanted, except it’s not.
Brush my hair, wash me off, wipe my bottom, what’s ten plus ten, I want my color book, the baby’s getting into the crayons, button my pants, tie my shoes, help me up, kiss this hurt, when’s dinner, can we go to the store because I have two dollars to spend, I need a snack, I can’t open the toothpaste, aw, man, it’s the minty toothpaste, I like the strawberry toothpaste, what are you doing? going to the bathroom? You don’t have a penis, where does your peepee come out?
There is something inherent in a mama that hears a need and that wants to meet it, desperately, right this minute. But the thing is, if I try to meet every single need in my house, I will go a little crazy.
Because one minute the 5-year-old will need someone to show him how to tie his shoes, again, and, at the same time, the 6-year-old will want help pouring the milk, because it’s a new gallon and I’m really thankful that he’s asking because the last thing I want is a whole gallon of milk dumped out onto the floor, but there’s no way in the world that I can be in two places at one time, and so one of those needs is going to have to remain unmet until I can manage it or he learns how to do it himself.
I tried to be in two places at once one time, and I ended up feeling resentful and angry that they would ask me to do so many things at the same time even though there was only one of me and six of them. So I had to take a step back. I had to breathe. I had to say it was okay that I couldn’t meet every single need the first time they asked. Or even the fifth time they asked. Or ever, sometimes (they did, after all, wish they could have gone to that party they missed. I was Cinder-Mama, not Fairy GodMama). It was good for them to learn how to wait. It was good for them to learn to do things for themselves. It was good for them to realize they were fully capable of doing what I could do.
[Tweet “Kids should learn how to wait. So the needs I can’t meet right this minute? Building character.”]
So they started tying their own shoes, because they figured out they could do hard things. They started pouring their own milk, even if it was a brand new gallon, because they knew they had permission to screw up and spill, as long as they cleaned it up. They started writing their own events on a calendar and waiting to be hugged and kissed and taking responsibility for their own backpacks and shoes and school folders.
They don’t always remember, of course. There are mornings when it still sounds like there are shrieking bells wrapped around my ankles. There are days they forget “mama” is not synonymous with “servant,” but they are learning, day by day by day, that they are fully capable of handling the world on their own.
No more Cinder-Mama. Except for my indescribable beauty, of course.
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.
