Oooh These Kids

Life as a mother is anything but dull, that’s for sure.

About 1:30 today I was just getting ready to put my youngest down for a nap when the phone rings. I sat Emilie down and answered the phone. It was my sister calling to say her husband got a job (he’s been out of work since last July) and was starting Wednesday. Yippee! So we chatted for awhile and I finally signed off because my son was trying to climb onto the bar to get the fish food so he could feed the fish.

With the third birthday, I have recently discovered, comes a strong desire to “do it myself”….along with about 1/2 the ability to do so. This results in chaos and mini-disasters, and the occasional success at least once a day. If I didn’t have a fully formed sense of humor, and faith in God that “this too shall pass” I’d probably be locked in a closet crying and rocking about now.

So after WE fed the fish (HE fed the fish earlier this week and that led to Mommy having to close her eyes and count to ten before  doing of skimming and a partial water change in the fish tank.) I rounded up little miss to try to get her down for a nap again.

As she’s working on her bottle and we’re rocking I can hear Jack bumping around in the kitchen and dining room. Nothing sounds to worrisome. He’s hauling and dumping something with his scoop tractor. Soon though, I hear the tinkle of silverware….
That’s not on the ‘okay’ list of sounds. I stand up and carry Emilie into the kitchen where we find Jack standing on his tippy-toes to get a spoon from the silverware caddy. He looks and me and gives me that big, proud, heart-melting grin and says, “I’m getting ice-cream…..I did it myself!” Ooooooooo

I glanced over to the refrigerator and see there is a chair pushed against it, the freezer door is hanging open, and a box of ice cream is sitting on the chair seat. While I’m taking this in Jack skips back over to the box with his spoon takes a big scoop and starts putting it into a previously unseen cup. He’s three and thinks enough to put the stuff in a dish and not just eat it straight out of the carton like I would.

“Did Mommy say you could have ice cream?” I asked. "

“I did it myself!” He replies.

Quick parent quiz. What is the right way to approach this? I never said he could have ice cream, but I didn’t say he couldn’t either. Ultimately we discussed that he needs to ask before he helps himself to ice cream. I let him keep the scoop he had in his bowl (he’d licked it already) and he helped put the rest away. Disaster averted….or so I thought.

I put Emilie down while Jack and I talked and put the ice cream away and now she was nowhere to be seen. The girl is an adventurer and you turn your back for a moment and she just takes off. Fortunately her favorite room right now is the bathroom. She likes to pull herself up on the edge of the tub and scream to hear the echo sound. I headed that way and sure enough she was in the bathroom. She was not standing up on the tub however. Instead I found her leaning over her brother’s training toilet!

“Oh I hope there’s not pee in there!” was my first thought. The toilet doesn’t always get emptied in a timely fashion, especially if Jack took himself to the bathroom.  Oh course my hopes of an empty toilet were dashed when she stuck her hand down in the bowl and I her splahsing sound. Lovely, there’s my 9 month old gleefully splashing in  pee……*deep breath.*

I got her cleaned up. She was now an hour later going down for her nap. That means she’ll be late getting up and bedtime will be a struggle…..Aaaaahhh such is life. Like a said there is never a dull moment around here.
Now, where is my son…….