Well - it didn't work. I spent the next ten minutes listening to her cry and talk and cry some more. Then I finally heard, "May . . . I . . . please . . . some . . . OUT!?" She wanted out. And she had to use the magic phrase I've been trying SO HARD to teach her, didn't she? So I went to get her and nicely PLACE her back in her bed, with an explanation that it was STILL night-night time for Abby and she should STILL be asleep.
And I learned what the jibberish had been between her cries . . .
She was totally and completely naked. She had wet through her clothes, and when I didn't come, she took her wet clothes off by herself and then took her wet diaper off BY HERSELF . . . . Yep. Completely. naked. was. she.
Then tonight, while Dave went to the grocery store to get some necessary evils (like cinnamon and apple sauce and MILK), I decided to cook dinner AND give the kids a bath . . . because that is what you do when it is after 6:00 at night and you are fighting the clock and want to keep them occupied and moving TOWARDS bed. I put the rice in the rice maker, turned the microwave on, and chased my excited kids to the bathroom!
After I had soaped them down and it was time for them to have their free-time playtime with all their fun bath toys, I ran into the kitchen to mix up the other ingredients for rice pudding, so that when the rice was done cooking, I could just throw it all in my fancy Pampered Chef rice maker and have dinner by the time they got out of the tub. Sounds reasonable, right?
But then the can of evaporated milk WOULD NOT OPEN. I tried everything! Three or four times. Still not a budge in the seal! In the meantime -- and you can imagine that I was getting more and more frustrated with every second that my SIMPLE and QUICK task was dragging on and on and on -- I hear Abby and her jibberish again, telling me something that Isaac is doing. But she isn't crying, so I know he isn't hitting her over the head with the tupperware container they use to pour and dump water all over each other with such childish DELIGHT every time they take a bath. And they were actually laughing between her jibberish cries for some sort of help or interference or something. So I said, "In a minute" and continued to focus on that darn can!
Until I realized that their laughter wasn't so muffled . . . and that Abby had stopped trying to get me to come in . . . and Isaac was making that "BAM" sound he makes when he is throwing something really hard.
Or tossing water . . . all over my floor.
Yes, they had decided that I needed some encouragement to finally mop the bathroom floor . . . and had literally FLOODED it to the point that the rug was POURING water when I picked it up to hang it up to "drip dry," and the water was seeping out into the hallway. There was at least 1/8" of water ALL OVER MY BATHROOM FLOOR -- and I don't have a small bathroom here. It was even back behind the toilet! No, in my haste and exhaustion and frustration, I didn't get a picture. And I decided that the safest place for the twins while I cleaned the mess was right there in the bathtub, hearing each second how that was not a good choice for them to throw water on the floor, that we DON'T do things like that, that the water should stay IN THE TUB and the glass door should stay CLOSED AT ALL TIMES. It sounds a lot nicer here than it did in the moment, I assure you.
And we still didn't have any dinner . . . or an open can of Evaporated Milk. *sigh*
And in the end I concluded that I really need to listen to my daughter more. She's a great tattle-tale. She knows what she (and Isaac) should and should NOT be doing, and she knows when they are making bad choices. That doesn't stop her from joining the fun, but at least she is POLITE enough to tell me all about it and even invite me to intervene before it gets out of hand . . . each and every single time.
Lesson learned? I doubt it. I'm not that quick! :-)
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