my girlies three were in a mood. a snit. a pack of wildebeests. ants in their pants. or, as lill explained it, bees all up in their bums.
they wanted a hot-water balloon battle out back, complete with bathing suits and the lingering snow drift that will not go away no matter how hard the sun works. {the boiling water inside the balloons was intended to help with the melting, but all i could imagine was esmé's and her little friend tootie's baby skin. welting.} oh, and the plan included lots of wet dirt, as grae calls it. because she knows i'm anti-mud.
i said no.
they wanted a spa afternoon with the other neighborhood wildebeests. their plan involved key lime yogurt and coffee.
i said no.
they moved on to nail polish and popsicles on a persian rug.
really, girls? really? do i even need to say it?
they wanted to make chalk murals on our front walkway, complete with bathing suits and chalk powder and water bottles. oh, and the plan included lots of wet chalk, which looks an awful lot like wet dirt.
i said no. they did it, anyway. one out of four isn't so bad.
you were way nicer in jordan! they growled.
shorties? we had a maid in jordan. and if i remember correctly, she didn't enjoy your genius plans either.
especially not the one loosely titled it's saturday morning! let's grab some vegetable oil and turn this kitchen into one grand slip 'n slide!
for the record? i would've wanted to say yes to that one.
do you remember making messes like this when you were a little? like, daily? do tell. because all i remember is reading books and playing with manure. {i grew up on a farm, and they looked like pies. don't judge.}
gummi bear candelier seen and drooled over here. and i can't recall where i first saw letters of note, but it's so genius i can't be bothered to pretend i found it myself.
22 comments:
I can't think back to when I was okay with messes... As a parent and maid-in-chief, I have to say, I don't much approve of them and I am certain I am doing irreparable damage to my little man. Although, I have to say.... You know Pig-Pen? The Peanuts character? I swear Noah looks a lot like him. And that's not my OCD talking. Seriously.
xoox,
-maria
i would have said to the slip and slide with the vegetable oil too. my fancy when i was young was making concoctions and try to get people to drink them. my mother also used to toss eggs at me when we were baking. messy moments like those really stay in the memory. you do need to say no sometimes but certainly not all the time.
one of my earliest messy memories... it was a summer long ago at my grandparents farm and I was no more than 3.
I was going with my grandpa to take care of the cows for the evening. I think this was a first time event for me... just the two of us. I was barefoot and walking behind grandpa through the pasture towards the barn and I kept seeing these dark brown, shiny puddles everywhere. I had no idea what they were so I decided to take a step in one. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.)
as soon as my foot splattered in the middle of that fresh pile, I knew immediately what it was that I had stepped in. I stood there... trying to figure out what to do next. grandpa turned, chuckled, picked me up and carried me to the barn and cleaned my foot off with kerosene!
I don't remember what happened after that... I hope someone washed me down with some soap and water!
ha ha hee hee...I always say I feel like Sisyphus, because I basically clean up after chooch all day long. Just me, rolling the giant boulder up the hill....again. Only to have it roll right back down at the top. :) I don't recall making much mess but, then to them,it isn't mess is it? It is FUN! :)
xo
Melis
ps that chandelier is to die. seriously.
i love the gummi bears. what a brilliant idea! and vegetable oil on the floor? hmm. starting to understand why you "hosted" several maids. (and i almost inserted another word for maid. oops.)
i love the gummi bears. what a brilliant idea! and vegetable oil on the floor? hmm. starting to understand why you "hosted" several maids. (and i almost inserted another word for maid. oops.)
i loved dirt. lots of dirt. and mud.(i know, you're cringing. and i apologize.)
when i lived on maui i taught preschool for two years and in the summer months we spent the majority of the day outside. i used to cover my legs and arms with shaving cream and let the kids "shave" me with popsicle sticks. they inevitably wanted to do my face but i had to draw the line somewhere. i went home dirty every day. i think i would have gotten along famously with your girlies three. :-)
that gummi bear chandelier is so pretty it makes my heart hurt.
i don't remember making huge messes when i was little--that was my brother's realm--but i definitely had an affinity for paints of all kind, and i'm pretty sure i drew on a wall or two.
it seems i make bigger messes as an adult, actually...
(i love the genius g3 plans, though. so funny to hear what's going on inside kids' heads. a spa afternoon with key lime yogurt and coffee? brill.)
i grew up in the country and we had an above ground pool. the cheap kind found at wal-mart, only 4 feet deep. my sister and i had the brilliant idea one day to get our two friends and start a whirlpool by running in circles in the pool. so we did and sure enough it worked so well it collapsed the pool's sides. water went everywhere. we dragged the pool off to the middle of the yard and turned that wet spot into the world's biggest mud puddle. and we played in it for days. it was the best weekend of that entire summer. and my mom deserves an award for putting up with four very muddy, giggling girlies that weekend. hosing us down on the deck while we screamed from the cold water before she ever allowed us to set foot in the house.
oh, and the picture of that light pendant? it's the most beautiful light i have ever laid eyes on.
i played waitress. i'd walk around the damned house all day with a pad and pen taking people's and things' (grandfather clock) orders. sometimes i'd work in a restaurant and serve them at the table; other times i'd work at a bed and breakfast and serve my imaginary customers (i think this stopped when i went to college) in their rooms.
i'm partial to hospitality.
hmmmm.
i am CRACKING UP! this is the nicest bunch of comments ever...
thank you! xoxo.
I had a really wicked stepmother from about 6-12, who never let my stepsister and I do anything fun, so we made our own fun while she wasn't looking. Like the time we decided to make a slip and slide on the kitchen floor. Oh, that was fantastic fun and we thought we did a marvelous job of cleaning up, but we got caught nonetheless (and there was heck to pay). Still, it's one of the fonder memories I have of my stepsister.
...then there was the time it seemed like a good idea to pop up the floor tiles in the study with a toilet plunger. Sprinkle sugar underneath, and replace the tiles. Why? Because it made such a cool crunchy sound while 'sailing the ocean blue' in laundry baskets and cardboard boxes.
Long forgotten and well on the way to other messes by the time Mom & Dad were scratching their heads trying to figure out the source of the ant infestation.
Whoops.
I adore your girls... and their "ideas." As good as gold..unless you are on the cleaning up end of it, then I understand.
I thought it would be fun to swim in garbage bags, you know the big black kind, one over head (arms & head popped through), etc. I also had the brilliant idea playing mermaids in the pool and by this I mean, dumping my mom's jewelry in the pool, tying my feet together with bobby socks, for a fin, of course and then searching for burried treasure. My name was Shelly and my friends was Sandy, appropriate, right? This all went down with the babysitter. I also thought it might be fun to wear my mom's bras on the outside of my clothes along with my easter gloves (fingers cut off) for the Desperately seeking Susan look.
However, and sadly, the story told most about me, and I cant believe I am admitting this, involves a poop sandwich (dog poop, to clarify). I convinced the neighbor girls to do this with me. Got 2 pieces of bread and a spoon from inside, put it together, wrapped it in paper, wrote to: carrie on the paper and left it on the door step of the teenage neighbor, rang doorbell and ran away. Really bad. I told on myself, cause I always do and my mom drug me by the ear across the street to apologize. The neighbor girls were sensible enough to keep their mouth shut and I looked like the deranged girl that did this all herself. Maybe I shouldn't have shared? But hopefully this makes you feel a lot better about mud and chalk and so on.
ps- thanks for the sweet compliment of a comment... too funny.. I wrote that line down while in the movie too!
pps- i am really curious if we are from close by .. I know you are from IL and now that you lived on a farm. right?
From being a "pay lady" and emptying the pantry of all canned veggies and dry goods, so I could swipe them on the unrolled black trash bag...to seeing how much could really go down the laundry chute from each floor until there was a back up, and then there was also an unfortunate ice cream shoppe, complete with dirt and water (ahh that grae, a girl after my own heart) and old coke bottles shaking til they looked like yoohoo...and then seeing if we could get a boy to take a sip...ewwwwww. It was messy, but at the time it was oh so much fun, I mean staying clean and orderly would make some pretty dull memories, if they were remembered at all!!!
But then again, the clean up and the apologies, to that poor boy who took a sip, AND his parents, yup...remember that too...
Have fun with the girlies, enjoy some controlled wet dirt, that snow will melt very soon!!!!
I was a tidy kid didn't like dirt, or grass or the sun for that matter. I liked commercials. no lie. My mom said when I was little wherever I was in the house I would run out to the tv to watch the 30-60 second bundles of fun only to leave and play in my room till the next jingle played. No wonder I ended up in advertising.
I was a strange child.
needless to say my mom and my aunt both thought it brilliant. so they had another [my aunts first] my little brother and cousin were not me. The opposite in fact. dirt, flour, mud, sticking heads in toilets, taking sewing machines apart with little tools
My aunt said she wanted a do over;)
Saw that gummi bear chandalier some place last week and LOVE it. Would have died for it as a child. Sorry but you and your girls sound pretty funny.
my brother and i would make "potions". we would empty out the kitchen cabinet spices and baking supplies into the biggest bowl we could find, add food coloring and then try to make it explode. sometimes it worked, often not. we were only allowed to make potions outside and most of my brothers' dolls and action figures lived with a continual powdery coating of dried orange flour goo. sometimes we'd make potions in the bathtub and put them back into the shampoo or soap bottles. not fun for the next person in the shower.
'you were way nicer in jordan' cracks me up - i get that kind of stuff everyday!!! man they're good at it
once it was - boy 1 'you were way nicer yesterday', boy 2 'yeah, tomorrow is going to suck'
i said, 'you think this is bad, imagine what next week will be like if you keep this up?!'
: ) lovesxx
I was a messy little girlie-girl....I loved to fish with my dad, and didn't mind the "bait your own hook and take your own fish off once you catch it" part a bit. I made clay "pots" (more like thimbles) from the creek-bank clay behind our house and spent a LOT of time climbing trees, especially the beautiful mimosa in the backyard. I was a romping, sweaty, grimy little jack rabbit one minute, the next a prima donna in a sailor dress and patent leather mary janes, standing in the middle of the coffee table and belting out songs from"The Sound of Music" for anyone who would listen - or my own reflection in the mirror if no other audience was available. All in all, I was indulged.
Which, I think, is why I was an indulgent mother. Still am, really.
If you have enough fun making the messes, cleaning them up afterward is totally worth it, ya know?
Yes, you know. : )
xox,
Susan
I remember having the largest food fight ever and my best friends house. She was the youngest of 4 kids and her parents were away on vacation and her older siblings and their friends thought a food fight was in order!!
I will never forget the huge mess we made, all 8 of us covered in food: ketchup, mustard, anything saucy from the fridge, chocolate frosting, milk, oh and also shaving cream it was crazy!! We were completely covered!
xx
callie
oh how I hate coming late to the party. but I still want to play so I'm commenting a day late...
One story that I instantly call to mind involves my very best childhood friend, Molly. She had a teeny bedroom in a teeny house that was so small she had to have her bed up on stilts. It was awesome.
So, anyway, right up above that loft bed of hers was the access panel to the attic. Of course with easy access like that we were going to go up there. I mean, come on! It was the perfect place for our new fort.
But in the attic was all sorts of loose insulation, and this didn't exactly make for a neat "house" so one afternoon we decided to neaten the place up a bit. Our best idea was to open the window and throw the insulation out. I mean, surely it would just blow away, right? Armful after armful. it went out the window until the attic was nearly empty.
We played and played up until the time we knew her Dad would be coming home and then snuck back down from the attic and acted like we were busy with barbies or something when her Dad came in. He asked what we were doing in the attic, and when we looked at him like "what do you mean? we weren't up there", he led us outside to see the piles of insulation all over the front yard, the neighbors' front yards and the street. It was like it snowed pink.
We almost missed dinner cleaning it all up.
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