Elly thinks robbers (something her brothers are obsessed with right now, as it fits in nicely with their other obsession, superheroes) are called Roberts. So she often flies around the room pretending she's "Soopa-Ehyee" and she's going to "get da Woberts!"
Owen calls napkins mapkins.
William can't say flamingos, he can only say falimgos.
But really, the most important thing for me not to forget is that these little people are children and sometimes they just need to have fun. I must remember that sometimes I shouldn't try to stop the fun, because fun can be so much more important than rules. This hit home on Friday night when Mark got back from work and realized the grass desperately needed mowing and it was now or never, since we had a small window in between rain storms. I'd made pizza for dinner and it was almost ready, but okay, fine, the law needed cutting and the pizza needed to cool before the kids could eat it.
Now the boys love to chase Mark around when he's mowing the lawn. I think it's the closest they'll ever get to living dangerously. So as soon as they saw him and the mower, they took off with great leaps and shouts and generally became wild animals. Our lawn, which hadn't been cut for two weeks due to our cottage holiday (more to come on this in other posts, with pictures, I promise), was shedding its grassiness all over the place. And the kids were loving it. They stripped down to their underwear and for some reason known only to small boys, began picking up all the freshly cut, kind of wet, very staintastic grass clippings and threw them all over each other to much glee and even more wild animal-like shouting. Elly followed behind and did her best to keep up. Although I do think her shouting was probably the loudest, no surprise there.
At this point, dinner is ready and on the table and I'm starting to feel a little hangry. Unfortunately for the kids it's also at this point that I spot them rolling around in huge piles of clippings, throwing it at each other and rubbing it into their sister's whiter than white hair and I go a little nuts. "Stop!" I yell from the back deck, "Stop that right now!"
Well didn't they ignore me? So I got a little indignant and yelled some more, but they were having such a good time and were so thoroughly engrossed in their game of Rub The Allergenic Into My Siblings' Faces that they didn't hear me. And I was just about to totally lose my mind, stepping a bit further into the garden to physically stop them from having any more of this...this...this...messy fun, when William ran past me, half naked, covered in grass clippings, green knees, elbows and feet whirling around yelling at the top of his lungs, "BEST! DAY! EVER!"
And that was that folks. How could I put a stop to the best day ever? So dinner was cold and we had to shower everyone and scrub their joints to within an inch of their lives to get the grass stains out? Big deal. It was a Friday and my kids were out there making memories. Sometimes you have to not forget what it's like to be a child and let the joy happen.
Gosh, I'm getting a little teary-eyed here. Can someone pass me a mapkin?
