Child Stories by Children

Tonight I'm not exactly laughing at my kids since we discovered a 10lb bag of chicken, 2 bags of veggies, a huge bag of frozen strawberries and my precious french fries all thawing in a freezer my 6 and 4 year olds left open in the garage. Great! I'll be cooking chicken all day tomorrow.

I was laughing earlier however. Jesse and Hannah came to me at different times today with stories about their youngest brother.

I was taking a shower after dinner. You ever have that experience when you wash your face, turn around and there stands a naked kid in the shower with you? Yeah, all modesty seems to leave with preschoolers in the house. So, I'm washing his hair and Hannah barges into the bathroom. The door slams open, the gush of cold wind flows over the shower door and she's got a complaint. Ammon has an obsessive fascination with the toilet brush. I made the mistake of letting him "clean" the toilet one day and its been downhill ever since. Apparently, Hannah came upon Ammon scrubbing away in the toilet, scared him when she caught him, and he flung the toilet brush at her, hitting her right in the stomach. By the time she gets to this part, she's practically yelling the entire story to me. "So NOW, I'm soaking wet with TOILET WATER!!!" I'm trying to control my laughter at this point. You know, there's a good naked and a bad naked, and someone laughing hysterically while naked is not good naked. But I tried to control my laughter so she didn't hear me, and told her quite calmly to just go clean up the mess. I'm still laughing though. If she saw me laughing, she would think it was at her, so I'm still trying to contain it, only, I'm dressed now.

Earlier tonight, before I found out about the freezer situation, I had taken Jesse with me on an errand. I laugh at his stories. I don't know if he'll see these stories as humorous when he's older, but I still get a good chuckle from them. It is something so simple, part of toddlers learning about life that makes these stories sweet and funny, but to a nine year old boy it just doesn't have the same charm. We've been trying to train the dogs on indoor behavior. They've never been snappy, but they know that Ammon and Joshua are just their height and lo and behold, their snacks are just right there for the taking. Ammon helped himself to a pepperoni stick today. He couldn't get the wrapper off, so Jesse helped him. Ammon managed to take one bite and then Oreo snatched the rest and ran off. Ammon figured he'd just go get another one, only this time he tried to get the wrapper off by chewing on it instead of getting Jesse's help again. By then, Jesse stepped in to help him, managed to get the now mangled and chewed up pepperoni stick unwrapped and gave it back to Ammon. Who promptly dropped in on the floor and the other dog, Cookie, helped herself to a pre-chewed treat. Jesse then realized he wanted a pepperoni stick, but sadly discovered that was THE last stick in the house, and the dog just ATE IT! This last sentence was punctuated with hands thrown in the air, a huge sigh, and a raised voice, as if eating the last pepperoni stick in the house is the crime of the century.


Meanwhile, I can only picture Ammon in all this, with his chubby little hands, wide eyes and busy body intent on the task at hand. Most likely, he won't remember these incidents, but his brother and sister sure will. He runs from one activity or in other words, mess, to another all day long. I'm not sure he remembers what he did this morning or even 10 minutes ago, but he sure is cute doing it all. Usually.

Again, I'm laughing about all this. If we didn't laugh, we'd cry, right?