Indoor Water Park

It was a rough afternoon - rain all day, overtired children, Annie on a nap strike, Jemma woke up from hers disoriented and hysterical. From 3:00 - 4:00, it was all I could do to keep my cool. Somehow, I did, and around 4:00, things seemed to even out a bit. The girls began to function without my direct involvement, so I snuck off to begin cooking dinner.

Half an hour later, I was feeling a little smug in the kitchen, making french onion soup (a little wine in the soup, a little for me seemed like a good idea) when I realized that it was perhaps a bit too quiet in the play room. I poked my head around the corner and heard what sounded like someone pouring water on the wood floor. That's because someone was pouring water on the wood floor. Hunkered down in a corner where they knew I wouldn't see, Annie and Jemma were silently but gleefully making a little water park in the playroom, pouring all the water from their sippy cups into the plastic play cups and coffeemaker that go with their play kitchen. Water was: on the rug, in puddles on the wood floor, on the metal cabinet we use as a coffee table, in their hair, on their clothes, all over their toys.

I marched on over to them and . . . started laughing. Annie cracked up too, and Jemma just kept happily transferring water from cup to cup, spilling a little on herself in the process. It was a mess, but I just couldn't get mad about it. It was the first time that the two of them have ganged up against me (and Annie, at least, clearly knew that she should not have been doing such a thing) to do something naughty and fun. We all cleaned up with paper towels and had a little talk about water staying in the cups and not being poured all around the house. And I promised that they can have lots of fun with water - in buckets, cups, sprinklers, kiddie pools - as soon as it gets a little warmer outside.