Lizzie is my little shadow. Whenever and wherever I am going, she is too. The other day as I was holding Julie in my arms, I noticed her drifting off to sleep. Just in time for nap time! So I'm wanting to go slip her into her crib for a nice nap, but I KNOW that Lizzie is going to be following close at my heels. And Lizzie's favorite thing to do lately is scream really loud around baby Julie just to get a rise out of her (and me usually). So I explain to Lizzie that I really need her to stay downstairs while I put her sister to bed. I assure her that i will be right back very soon! Liz responds with an excited "OK!" Then, to my amazement she actually does stay downstairs! (This is a VERY rare moment that she is ok with not being within my immediate vicinity, even for a minute. I often hear her desperately screaming, "Wait for me Momma!" if she feels I am heading upstairs too quickly for her pace.) So I'm quietly slipping Julie into her bed upstairs while thinking, "I'm so proud of Lizzie for listening!" A total of 2 minutes passes from the moment I leave Lizzie, run upstairs, lay Julie in bed, run downstairs, to the next moment where I catch her THROWING handfuls of rice as fast as she can into the hallway. She looks at me, looks at the rice on the floor, and then jumps onto her stomach and starts flailing her arms and legs saying, "Look Momma! I swimmin in the watey!!(aka:water)"
My reaction: Not happy and about to discipline harshly, but the swimming act is so amusing it disarms me. I am now seeing this situation in a more humorous light and what the heck...
the mess is already made so we might as well have a little fun with a whole lot of rice on the floor! So we did some more swimming...backstroke, breaststroke, the butterfly... that was the first (and hopefully last) time I have ever gone swimming in pool of rice.
