I recently bought Annie a bag of beads and some hemp thread to make necklaces. It's brilliant, 'cause she can literally string beads for hours and be completely occupied. It's less brilliant 'cause beads are little and get everywhere and take me hours to clean up. (Well, they would take hours to clean up if I didn't just vacuum up all the little stragglers and throw them out.)
Today though, I had carefully picked up as many as I could find and put them back into the bucket we keep them in after she'd finished playing with them. Or so I thought. Not 20 minutes later, Annie had poured them all out again on the bed, and was laughing about the ones that had rolled off the bed and onto the floor. A tad annoyed, I sighed and said, "Annie, why do you have to make such messes? I just cleaned that up . . . "
Ignoring me, she continues playing. But I hear her mutter under her breath, "Jesus loves when I make messes. Jesus loves to make messes too." Um, I don't know how to argue with that one with a three year old. I just told her that Jesus likes to clean up His own messes when He's done.
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Unrelated to the divinely sanctioned trashing of Mom's room, Annie's been singing all day. This isn't unusual. She likes to narrate her life through song. As she walks through the kitchen there's ballads about the messy floor or Ellie's high chair. When she's in her room, she sings sweetly to her baby dolls. And you can often hear her in the bathroom loudly belting out something along the lines of, "I am going potty! I am such a big girl! I can use the potty, but Ellie can't, 'cause she's little and uses diapers and I'm big and wear panties!" But I caught one little song that made me laugh, and I typed it up before I forgot it.
To the tune of "I've been working on the railroad":
"I'm the lea-der of our house! The leader of our house! I'm the lea-der of hou-ouse, just because I'm Annie!"
3 comments:
Claire has a huge tupperware thing full of beads. When she's done stringing I put muffin tins in front of her. She'll spend another hour sorting them by style, color, or shape. I'll do anything (including tons of cleanup) for an hour "free" time.
I love your stories, I always make the people around me listen while I read them out loud, but none of them know you or your kids, so the adorableness that is Annie and Ellie is completely lost on them. They are missing out.
I just have to laugh about the phrase: "divinely sanctioned trashing of Mom's room". Where do you come up with this stuff?! That's hilarious!
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