Words of a Child

We were having a nice evening at home. The boys were playing quietly, Deep Thinker (age 5) in their bedroom and Rowdy Rebel (age 2) in the living room. I was cleaning up in our room.

Deep Thinker is always quiet, so I really wasn’t too worried about the silence in their room. But when the silence in the living room hit the 5 minute mark, my child radar went off. I headed into the room to make sure Rowdy Rebel was okay.

HE SURE WAS OKAY. What was not okay was the living room. He had taken my entire carton of eggs (eight left in there) from the refrigerator and thrown in different parts of the living room. Broken egg in the middle of the carpet. Four broken eggs in the corner. Two broken eggs in front of the couch. My mouth dropped open, and I think I stood like that for about 5 minutes while Rowdy Rebel explained repeatedly and jovially “Rowdy Rebel break eggs!!!! Rowdy Rebel BREAK eggs!!! ROWDY REBEL BREAK EEEEEGGGGSSS!!!”

I wasn’t even sure about how to punish him. I resorted to the time-tested guilt trip a la modern-day time out. I sat him at the kitchen table so he could watch me clean up all of the eggs. As I did it, I repeated numerous times, “Breaking eggs is BAD. It’s very difficult for Mommy to clean up eggs!” He quietly watched me clean them up.

Finally, I stood up to survey that everything looked clean. There was still some yellow yolk residue visible here and there, but my back was aching, so I decided to rest and finish later. And Rowdy starts pointing toward the front door where we put our shoes. “Shoe! Shoe!” I said, “Don’t worry about the shoes.”

Then he clarified, “Egg shoe! EEEGGGGG SHOOOOE!”I walked over to the door and saw what he was talking about. There was big yellow egg yold plastered across my favorite pair of tennis shoes. Of course.

Filed under: Child Speech, Child Thoughts, Damage Control, Kids Talking about Themselves, Kind of Gross, Uncategorized