I Can't Leave You Alone for Five Minutes

Yesterday I was enjoying a leisurely late morning of reading the newspaper in between issuing warnings to the children to stop climbing furniture. When I heard a buzzer sound, though, I had to spring into action. The washing machine cycle had just ended, and I only had enough time to hang the load outside, prepare lunch, and issue a couple more furniture climbing warnings before the clocks turned to noon. That’s when the kids eat lunch, and their whining turns less plaintive and more frantic.

I hung the laundry on the line outside and rushed back in to prepare lunch. I poured yogurt into the last of three individual serving dishes seconds before noon, and searched the house the round the kids for lunch. Abbie was in her room reading, and being significantly less destructive than usual. I appreciated that. After failing to find the boys in the house, I looked outside to see them in the backyard. They were huddled around the clothesline, celebrating over their freshly killed clothing.

As I mentioned yesterday, the kids love pulling wet laundry off the clothesline. I wish I had remembered that before I left the door open for them to wander outside. I assumed they’d do more acceptable activities outdoors, like play with the swing set or test the edibility of our backyard flora. Instead they went straight for their old standby of “pull the laundry off the line,” and successfully yanked almost every garment I had just hung.

I shooed the boys inside and went to work re-hanging the laundry. Several minutes later with the final sullied shirt in hand, I heard a noise from the house. It almost sounded like glass breaking, but they couldn’t have gotten into any glass. They probably dumped something small and metallic on the floor, like our entire utensil tray. I started to hang the last shirt before going inside when I heard the glasslike sound again. My parental alarm went off, the one that signifies my children are doing something that is either harmful or will make me want to harm them when I see what they’re doing.

I rushed back inside to see Tory sitting on the kitchen floor. He’d pulled a few glass cups from the cupboards, broken them on the floor, and was now playing with the shards. He saw me, knew he was in trouble, and scampered away from me, running barefoot directly through the broken glass. He had a mischievous laugh as he scurried, which is much better than the anguished screaming he would’ve had if he had embedded glass in his foot.

I took stock of my other children. Ian had climbed on the kitchen counter, possibly to help Tory at first, and was now munching his lunch. That was messy, but not the worst thing he could do. Abbie had found a large glass shard, and was munching that, which was possibly the worst thing she could do.

I grabbed the glass from Abbie’s hand and mouth, pulled Ian off the counter, and shooed everyone into their rooms while carefully avoiding the broken glass on the floor. I needed everyone safely locked far away while I swept up the floor. Plus I knew there was no way they could hurt themselves locked in their rooms, and that was important peace of mind for me while I took my time to re-make their lunches.