Oh Edric. Buddy it’s so hard being four. There are lots of things that you can do and a lot of stuff still to learn. But I think this incident will probably go down for stories to be told many years later with lots of laughter.
Last Wednesday the older two boys were at homeschool enrichment and we put the two littles down for naps. It was a quiet time day for Edric (some days he does naps and some days quiet time). He asked me if he could do quiet time in the play room instead of his bedroom. It seemed to be an ok idea with some parameters clearly laid out. We told him that he couldn’t play with play-doh, and no paint or markers and if he colored with crayons then he needed to only color on paper. We told him he could play with his cars and legos.
I was in the living room working through my list of things to do and I could hear him happily playing upstairs and decided to just keep letting him play while I finished checking off things.
After the two littles woke up from nap I got snacks ready for everyone and headed upstairs so we could all play in the playroom with him. That was when I discovered what all he had been up to. There was dry kitten food all over the playroom. And as I explored and looked more I discovered that the fish tank was totally brown with the fish having to dodge and swim through a tank full of kitten food. Granted these are miracle fish, we bought them over 5 years ago from the pet store and they refuse to die. We have gone extended amounts of time forgetting to feed them and yet they live on. And then I discovered the large tin that is suppose to be full of fish food was soaking wet sitting in the middle of the playroom full of kitten food.
After I took the two littles downstairs (because I knew that they would take what was already a war zone and make it even worse) I went back up and sat Edric down and ask him what happened.
He told me in a very serious voice “Kitties do it.”
“Oh, and how exactly did the kittens open the food bag, spread it all over the entire room, open the fish tank lid, and dump it all in there?”
“Kitties have mouths and hands.”
At this point I handed him the vacuum cleaner and asked him to start vacuuming and excused myself from the room for a minute. I had to step out and giggle because his answers were so wrong and yet he was so serious about it. I figured it was far better to laugh then get angry at this point.
He vacuumed up the mess and he and I had a long talk about telling the truth, about doing things that we know are probably not right. He eventually admitted that he had been the one to dump everything out, but when I had him tell Clint what had happened he started by saying “Fish food all gone.” So despite my big long talk and his ability to repeat back to me, he still wasn’t real willing to fess up….not all that different from many of us often times.
He and Clint spent a good hour or so catching the fish, putting them in a new bowl, cleaning out and dumping the fish tank out and finishing cleaning up the mess he had made.
Oh Edric, I love you. Sometimes I get frustrated at you, sometimes I just have to laugh, but you will always keep me on my toes and I’m sure we will have more stories like this to come.
Hiking Mommy 