The Harrowing/Heartwarming Parent Moment of the Week
This picture features Sweet Boy#3 zooming down to the water on Lake Day when we bus the campers to Lake Chelan for the afternoon. Lake Days have been transformed for me now that all of the boys are strong swimmers. In years past I used to hover and sprint after them with life jackets in hand. But now that they are 12, 10, and 8 my hovering days are over.
Or are they?
Did you know that twelve-year-olds are legally old enough to babysit without adult supervision? Did you know that ten-year-olds can be left home alone in Washington state? So surely one’s own twelve-year-old could hold down the fort so that Momma could zip over to camp and take a few pictures or perhaps take the dog for a short walk. Well, the answer is both yes and no.
No injuries occurred while I was gone. Of that I am thankful. However, so much more happened than I dared to even dream. The boys were blowing bubbles when I walked out of the house and over to camp the other day. The camp is a 30 second walk from our house and blowing bubbles is a nice calm activity, right? When I returned, they were skating. It is not winter. We do not live in a skating rink. How did this phenomenon occur? They filled the dog dish with bubble solution (I was pleased that they made their own inexpensive solution using dish soap) and then blithely tossed the aforementioned bubble solution onto the kitchen floor. They repeated this several times and then began to skate around the kitchen with joyful abandon…until I returned.
Later in the week, I got the boys set up playing a board game that is so vast it can take up our whole living room and turn it into an amazing fantasy world full of castles and orcs and skeleton armies waving weapons in grim determination. It is very fun and time consuming and I was certain that all would be well. 12, 10, and 8 remember…oh and their friend who is 13. I walked back through our door just in time to hear one of the boys shout “You got toilet water one me!” with no small amount of indignation in his voice. Yes indeedy, that mature ten-year-old had just dipped a cup into the toilet and splashed the contents onto his brother, the hallway, and a basket of clean laundry. The splashed brother glowered and asked: “That wasn’t used toilet water was it?” You could have heard the crickets chirruping in the silence that followed. Apparently, they still need their mother, really really really need there mother.
