A Great Idea

It was a beautiful day yesterday. We spent most of the day outside. When Sarah woke up from her afternoon nap, Dan went in to get her up and to give her a snack. I was "in charge" of the twins.

At this point in the day, I felt that the twins didn't require a lot of attention. They were happily playing together and running all over the yard. I was enjoying myself in the front garden doing some planting, weeding, and watering. Despite not having a fence, I wasn't too worried when the twins disappeared from my view. They have an innate respect for our property boundaries, they are terrified to go near the road, and they typically warn me before they do anything bad.

When Dan went in, I continued to let them muck about out of my sight. Every couple of minutes, I would call out "Are you happy?". Both girls would respond "yes". Great. They were content and within ear shot. I kept on doing my thing.

Katie made an appearance. She said, "I have a great idea! Let's put water into the pool!" (the pool is their little plastic wading pool that Dan had left out when cleaning the shed). I told her that this wasn't a good idea at all. It would be far too cold. Instead, she and Bethie could pretend to swim. This satisfied her and off she went.

About 10 minutes later, Katie was back and Bethie was right on her heels. As Katie spoke, she started taking off her clothes "I've got a new plan. I'm going to put my bathing suit on". As I was frantically trying to get her clothes back on, I explained that she could pretend that she was wearing a bathing suit. Both girls were pleased and disappeared again.

Moments later, the girls were back. Sopping wet. Since I had the hose in the front with me, I was confused why they could be so completely wet. Katie explained that they had gone swimming in the pool, and then she asked me to join. Needless to say, I was interested.

As we head into the backyard, I saw that the girls had pushed the pool under the "wheel" where I keep the hose. There is a small leak where my two hoses join. By moving the pool, they had captured the water that was leaking and thus started to fill the pool. And then they went swimming.

Much to Katie's dismay, I dumped the water out of the pool. Then she and I had heated negotiations about what we should do with the pool. I wanted to put it away and she wanted me to put more water in the pool. While we were "debating" this, Bethie had sat down in one of my gardens and literally rolled in the dirt.

Katie was screaming and crying and absolutely dripping wet. Bethie was happy as a lark, but wet and filthy! This is when Dan came outside again and commended me on my magnificent parenting abilities. How did I react? I took Sarah and told him to deal with the twins!