The other day I was doing some gardening when Willa emerged cheerfully with a bowl of ice cream. She was followed closely by Milo with a much larger bowl of ice cream.
"Um, watcha got?" I queried cautiously.
"Ite cweam," Willa sang, in her lovable 3-year-old dialect. "Milo gotted it for me!"
"Yeah!" Milo chimed in, "I did it all by myself!" He was smiling from ear to ear, his shirt covered in chocolate from wiping his hands in it.
"You're awfully messy," I commented. "Who's going to clean your shirt? Are you?"
Oddly, he agreed.
I cleaned myself off and went inside, first to the kitchen where I was greeted by a Willy Wonka version of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The ice cream tub was in the middle of the floor, lid to one side and scoop on the other. There was a lot of "low velocity ice cream splatter" where the bowls had been and sticky chocolate footprints nearby. There were smudged chocolate handprints on the dishwasher ("Is it clean?") and in the cutlery drawer ("No, it isn't.").
Leaving the kitchen to put the ice cream away, I found the chest freezer lid wide open. Dirty handprints covered the lid and the outside and inside of the freezer.
I heard Milo running water in the bathroom sink. Oh sure, I thought. Now he washes his hands! My frustration and I, in that order, walked into the bathroom to find him stripped to his underwear, his shorts and t-shirt in the sink.
"I'm washing my clothes," he said, smiling proudly.
He was so pleased with himself - he had made ice cream for himself and his little sister and washed the ice cream out of his shirt like I'd asked him to. How could I be upset with that?
So I quietly cleaned up the freezer, the kitchen floor, the counter, the dishwasher and the cutlery drawer. And I didn't even balk at scrubbing his and Willa's shirts for half and hour to get all the chocolate out.
Sometimes, you just have to let them grow up at their own pace.
Happy sweeping!
Kathleen Gunther
Editor, ContestHound.com
