moms on alert

Taking care of pre-schoolers is a wearisome unrewarding job. My daughter-in-love says the 18-month-old toddler prefers to play with the real phone. He sneaks to the phone in his parents room to play with it. When he sees his mother’s shadow in the doorway he throws the phone away, flops face down on the bed and pretends to be asleep, sure his momma won’t know what he was doing.
When he isn’t trying to figure out how to run up the phone bill, he works on the water bill, He pulls a child-sized step stool to the bathroom sink and turns the water on and off. For variety, every few hours he flushes the commode. His sister prefers to run up the water bill using the garden hose.
Her momma was absorbed with yard work recently when the 3-year-old filled her toy watering can. Momma did not realize what was happening until her daughter brought the watering can filled with water, pieces off shrubbery, leaves, weeds and flowers from around the yard. She had stuffed them into the pot before lovingly handing the arrangement to her mother.
It was a moment to cherish and to offset the wearisome days of toddlers working to conquer the world around them. If it were up to the children, they would conquer and jump from every high point in the house.
When the new couch arrived a few months ago, momma said, “no eating or drinking on the couch – and no jumping!” All three rules were broken within the week. The pre-schoooler loves to climb up and jump down. She jumps from the back of the couch and tries to jump from one arm to the other.
Recently, she climbed the three-tiered, bookshelf headboard on her parent’s bed. Her parents threatened her with dire physical consequences if she ever did that again. Ten minutes later her little brother was caught at the top of the same headboard, ready to fly, He would have, too, but something told his mother to turn around and look before he took off. God in his Heaven watches over little children.
He also sends unexpected blessings to parents of small children, sometimes while shopping for groceries. The grandchildren’s mother included a couple of balloons among the diapers and jugs of milk. The baby batted his balloon. Big sister held hers carefully. She knows balloons will break if played with too roughly.
As momma unloaded the groceries into the mini-van, little brother made funny noises into the balloon and created silly faces at his mother through the balloon. When momma buckled his big sister into her booster seat, big sister copied him. She talked through the balloon to her mother, “I see a beautiful woman. She is buckling me in. She is my mother.”
The blessing of that moment should last until the next episode of bookcase climbing. Caring for pre-schoolers can be a wearisome, unrewarding job — but sometimes it isn’t.