I peeked into the kitchen to check on my four children who were sitting on the floor playing with my pots, pans, and lids. They loved putting toys inside them and covering everything up with the lids or using my wooden spoons to pretend that they were cooking.
This would often keep them occupied for hours; and with four of them so close in age, I was grateful that they were playing and entertaining each other. My daughter was 19 months older than my twin sons. and the twins were two years older than my youngest son. So, I had my hands full most of the time and relished those moments when I could just sit down and have a cup of coffee.
Baking Bread
Well, during the time since I last checked on them, it had snowed flour in my kitchen and it covered everything, including the kids! I was baking bread earlier that morning and had just opened a new 20-pound bag of flour; that I left sitting on the counter in a spot that I thought was out of their reach. Wrong!
One of my sons was a climber and had ingeniously used the pots and pans to build steps to climb up and reach the bag of flour. When I yelled “Oh no! What did you do?” They all got quiet. And then my daughter said, “Mom, we are making bread.” Now tell me, how can you get angry with that?
I wanted to cry because there was flour everywhere! But, I didn’t have time, I had to get them bathed, the flour was starting to get in their eyes. That was the easy part, the hard part was cleaning up the mess! It took most of the day to accomplish that; and even then, I found flour in nooks and crannies for weeks.
You Can Dress Them Up
My daughter loved dressing up her Barbie Dolls, playing with my jewelry and she loved playing dress up. So, I created two separate jewelry boxes: One with small items such as pierced earrings and pins that I kept locked because of the potential danger to her, and the other with larger necklaces, bracelets and clip-on earrings that I left open on my dresser for her to play with. She also loved clomping around in my shoes and wearing any clothes of mine that were silky or shiny.
One evening after dinner, some adult family members came over to visit my husband and me. After a short visit with our guests and sharing in some of the snacks that we offered, the kids got a little bored with our conversation and went to their rooms to play.
When I checked on them, my daughter was in my room playing in the jewelry box, and the boys were playing with cars and trucks on a pretend road that they had created with throw rugs on the floor. All was well, they were occupied!
The next time I checked, my daughter was in the boy’s room with my jewelry box and was putting jewelry on her brothers. The boys seemed caught up in the shiny stuff and didn’t seem to mind. Again, all was well, they were occupied!
A short time later they walked into the living room to visit the adults. We all looked over at them. After our initial shock, we all started laughing hysterically! All four kid’s faces were covered with lipstick (most of it was not on their lips).
They were dressed in my lingerie (slips, pajamas, robes), and they all had my high heels on their feet. They were wearing enough jewelry on their necks and arms to make Mr. T envious, and even had clipped earrings on their ears. But, what really had us laughing was that each of them had a bra on top of all the other clothing (straps were over the shoulders, but the bras were not hooked in the back).
My daughter said, “Look how pretty we are!” To this day, I still wonder how my daughter convinced her brothers to go along with that. But, I can tell you no one was happy when I was scrubbing all that lipstick off their faces!
Children often imitate their parents when they are young and perhaps by default in later years. They say that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” But, in young children, I think that it is more “Monkey see, monkey do.” The little ones mimic the things that you do, without much knowledge or understanding of why you do them, and without any thought of the consequences or the mischief (or laughter), they create.
“The mischief of children is seldom actuated by malice; that of grown-up people always is.” Antoine Rivarol
