Ward and I came home from work and went upstairs with Theo. He sat quietly on the floor looking at a book while we changed our clothes and discussed how our days had gone. Soon we went downstairs to join Wally who was watching Sesame street. Theo toddled in front of us and when he reached the kitchen floor, his feet slid out from under him and I heard a loud crack as his head hit the floor. That was soon followed by loud crying. As I went to see if he was hurt, I slipped too, but fortunately didn't go all of the way down. We both had slipped on a wet floor and luckily, Theo was not badly hurt.As it turns out, Wally was no longer watching Sesame Street. He was standing in the middle of the family room (next to the kitchen) with the garden hose in his hand spewing water everywhere. At that point Ward and I just about lost it. Trying to get control of the situation, I immediately sent Wally to his room and told him to get on his bed and not move until we came to talk to him. Next while Ward took the hose outside and turned off the water, I dried off Theo and put him in his high chair to keep him out of the way. And then we began the long task of trying to clean up the water. There was about 1/2" of water on the tile floors and the carpets next to them were soaked. The whole drying process actually took days, but after an hour or so, we had most of the water sopped up.
Then to deal with Wally. We still found him on his bed. He knew that we were not happy and was afraid to move. After a few sentences about the danger of wet floors and the problems that come with wet carpets, we asked the question we had wondering about the most.
"Wally, what were you thinking?"
He slowly replied. "Well, my good mind was on vacation in Alaska, and my bad mind said, 'Do it, do it. It will be fun.'"
And there you have it. The reasonings of a four-year-old Wally.
You never know what kids are thinking.
ReplyDeleteToo funny!
ReplyDeleteMy husband was about the same age when he began to wonder if hose water came out of the hose, if the hose were inside a house (thinking water only came out when the hose was outside). Anyways, being a scientist, he decided to test out his hypothesis, and put the hose into the neighbor's basement window, then turned the hose on full blast. The neighbors were away for the day, and my husband became distracted, and left for other play, leaving a hose running in the neighbor's basement. Once the truth came out, the questions "what were you thinking?" erupted. It's so hard to understand a child's reasoning, sometimes.
It's interesting that he chose the neighbor's house for his experiments. . Kids do the darnedest things.
DeleteToo funny!! I have so many stories of my boys younger years that I drag out from time to time to share with their wives and give them a bit of shaming for what they put me through. :-)
ReplyDeleteDo you see any of the tendencies you saw in your boys in your grandchildren?
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