If anyone is interested in knowing what life is like with five little boys, ages 6 months to 7 years, I will happily tell you that it has many pleasant days with only minor crazy moments scattered throughout. I sometimes tell people that because we have no daughters, I get to be the princess of our family. The boys bring me flowers from our yard (or darling weeds they call flowers), and I sometimes even feel like their princess. But there are other days when their behavior tells me those boys would rather have a wicked old witch for a mother than a princess.
One such day occurred on Friday last week. It started off well enough; I had let the boys ride their bikes around in the garage (I don't let them ride out front unsupervised). My oldest son, Hyrum, had stepped barefoot in a dirty, oily patch. I told him that he needed to rinse his foot before walking on the carpet. He opted to wash it with the garden hose in the backyard. I had gone inside to put 2-year-old Samuel down for a nap. I called out to Hyrum to please turn off the hose when he was done. Five minutes later, I could still hear the water running, so I called out again to remind him to turn off the hose. After a couple more minutes, I heard 4-year-old Caleb yelling, "Hyrum, how do you turn off the water?" to which Hyrum yelled back, "Not yet, Caleb! Not yet!" I peeked outside, and Hyrum was STILL holding the hose, half soaked, squirting his brothers who were fully dressed and also soaked. Rather than nag at him again, I decided to use a "magic mommy trick," and I turned off the water to the whole house.
As I went upstairs to nurse baby Enoch and get him ready for a nap, I could hear the boys shouting in confusion about the mysterious cessation of the water. From behind Enoch's closed bedroom door, I could tell that they had recovered from their disappointment, and were playing elsewhere in the house. I could hear occasional giggles and squeals and I figured that all was well. I moved into the kitchen to clean it up, and could still hear the boys playing... somewhere. When it was time to do dishes, I realized the water was still turned off. On my way to turn it back on, I figured I had better find the boys and see what they were up to. My search led me to the closed master bathroom door, behind which the boys were talking and giggling. Suddenly Hyrum called out angrily, "It still won't go down, Andrew!" (Uh-oh.)
Wondering what they could possibly be doing in there, I threw open the door. There they were, all three of them completely naked, clothes strewn about on the floor, Andrew and Caleb in the shower fussing with the faucets, and Hyrum in front of the toilet, plunger in hand. After asking in my best witchy-mom voice what on earth was going on in here, they explained through giggles that since they were all wet from the hose, they figured they would rinse off with a shower. But of course, they couldn't turn the water on. They each needed to use the toilet before getting in, but after the first flush, the tank wouldn't refill, and in an effort to get it all to go down, Hyrum grabbed the plunger... Yeah, it was a mess.
Some days are like that. Thank goodness for a good-natured husband and mother-in-law who each responded to my venting later that day by laughing at the ordeal. It really lifted my mood and helped cast the whole experience in a much better light. And no, I didn't kill my kids. They are alive and well, and are probably stirring up mischief somewhere around here!
