Kids Say . . . What I Say?

Today I gave Isaac a bowl of dry cereal, which he later spilled in the closet filled with my "craft" supplies.  Abby dutifully came in and told me exactly what happened, but all I got was this:

Abby: Mommy (jibberish) Isaac (jibberish) mess! 
Me: Isaac made a mess? 
Abby: Yeah! Come on. (As she reaches out to take my hand and lead me to the mess.)
Me: No, Abby -- can you help him clean it up?
Abby: (Looks confused for a second.) Yeah.

A few seconds later, she returned again, with broken-up fruit loops in her hand, and repeats the same thing she had told me before.  And so do I.

A few seconds later . . . here's Abby . . . and Isaac STILL made a mess.  And she wants me to come and see.

But I was hungry!  They had eaten lunch while I took a brief nap, and I really wasn't interested in Isaac's mess.  After all, they were just playing in the entry way.  Not that big of a deal to clean up, right?

After her third trip to the kitchen, I realized that they sounded farther away than the entry way, and they seemed very enthralled in whatever it was they were doing.  So, I went to see what was going on. There they were, playing in the closet, laughing, picking up the cereal and putting it down again, throwing around a few other things I had stored in there, and really excited about the giraffe head they had found on the floor (it had broken off of a lamp my mom gave them when they were born -- and broken ceramic was NOT as okay as broken cereal in the hands of toddlers -- not to mention the push pin Abby had that they had taken off the make-shift towel curtain I had hung in there to make the room dark enough for naps).

I quickly grabbed the dangerous "toys" - which made me Miss Popular as they started to scream and cry and want them back.  Then I tried to "shew" them away while I cleaned up the mess.  

As I'm cleaning it up, since the space is too tight for me to have them help me clean up, I am trying to talk them through what happened and that they shouldn't bring food in here and should be more careful to not make messes like that.  They agree, in turn, and then I hear Isaac say, "Mess . . . uh-oh. Oh, shoot!" A few seconds later, Abby says, "Dang it!  Isaac . . . Mess . . . dang it!"

And while stifling laughter, I stop to think about what they are learning from Mommy.