Backwards Underwear, Spilled Rice and Pirate Ships

I love my adventurous life with our two preschool-aged boys. They provide our home with bustling activity, love, and a truckload of amusement.

James is learning to dress himself. Therefore, today he is wearing his underwear backwards, which is clearly giving him a wedgie and the opportunity to half-moon everyone, but he won't let me help him change them around. When he took off his plastic tool belt after "fixing" our sofa, his pants came off with the belt. Proud of his new dressing skill, he put his pants back on himself--backwards like his underwear.

We'll be going for haircuts and a quick trip to the grocery store in just a bit and I'll suggest he put his pants on frontwards, but he's child #4 and if he wants to wear his clothes backwards or inside out, he's entitled to that creative flair. I don't really care if random strangers judge me an inept parent. Walk a mile in my shoes-on-the-wrong-feet and perhaps you'll understand!

Shortly after breakfast the boys decided that they would get into the dry bathtub and pretend to shower while fighting off invisible attacking sharks. Apparently one of the invisible sharks bit one of the boys in the butt because pretty soon all I heard every few seconds was, "BUTT!" followed by hysterical belly laughter.

"Uh, guys?! I can hear you. Choose a more appropriate word to shout, please."

This was followed by silence before they both broke into more hysterical laughter.

I figuratively double-fist a mug of coffee and another of water every morning. After the "butt event," I refilled my coffee mug and then absently put the creamer into my water and drank the creamer/water. Yuck! I hate it when I do stupid things like that.

The boys' friend, Jacob, came over to play this morning. His is one of the best-mannered three-year-olds a person could ever have the pleasure of knowing. I was happy that he and James were enjoying our multi-sensory table filled with rice in the learning lab.

"Do the best you can to keep the rice in the table, okay boys?" I reminded them as a few grains of rice fell to the floor--an expected rice table hazard.

I was just a few feet away in the hallway re-organizing the linen closet when Timothy approached the learning lab and froze. "MOM!" he exclaimed, "They are throwing rice on the floor!"

I approached the lab to see both boys throwing fistfuls of rice on the hardwood floor, which was now transformed into a wall-to-wall white sea of bouncing, rolling, rice grains.

"AAH! STOP! STOP!" my voice echoed. The boys froze, their fists or rice suspended above their heads. "Put the rice down. This is not good," I said recovering my calm voice. Then making the most of a messy situation, I added, "Did your science experiment show you that dry rice bounces? It appears that rice bounces pretty far on a hardwood floor, doesn't it? I think you should go play somewhere else now."

I have the rice mostly cleaned up and stored away in plastic zippered bags. Needless to say, the rice has taken a break from the now-empty multi-sensory table. I'm trying to decide what medium will go in there next as I look ahead in their preschool lesson plans.

The boys, in their never-ending creative state, have taken Squawker, the Word Time parrot, and climbed into the multi sensory table-turned-pirate ship, which they pointed out on the map, is actually rolling on the sea just off the shores of west Africa. Don't be impressed: they know that the only way I'll let them stand up in the table is if they are showing off their geography skills by studying the world map hanging on the wall above it.

It's now supposed to be nap time and I'm supposed to be in the garage fixing a flat tire on the snow blower, but neither is currently happening. I've learned that flexibility is one of the requirements of parenting. It allows time for things like teaching (or un-teaching) vocabulary, practicing developmental milestones, creating impromptu science experiments and geography lessons, and blogging the pricelessly ordinary moments of these beautiful, fleeting days.