~ The Mess ~

Standing in the den talking to my older children, I couldn’t help but notice the sudden drop in volume in the kitchen. It stood out like the horn on a freight train, and then the loud whispers began… My seven-,three-, and one-year-olds were up to something.

Easing my way over to the kitchen entrance, I viewed my seven-year-old grabbing all the freshly washed kitchen towels out of the drawer and throwing them on the floor next to his squatting three-year-old brother.

My three little boys tried to make their vitamin drink this morning without my help, and it resulted in a sea of green powder all over my kitchen tile. “Shhh! Let’s clean it up before she comes back,” my seven-year-old loudly whispered to his younger brothers.

“Squirt. Squirt. Give me the squirt!” my three-year-old demanded, wanting to squirt and wipe the mess away, like he does on a mirror. My one-year-old just thought the whole thing was good old fun. He joined in on the excitement by walking back and forth through the mess in his clean clothes. The problem was that this particular mess needed to be either vacuumed or swept, not soaked with clean white towels!

The green powder quickly turned to green mud and began to seep into the grout in our tile floor. I could see that it was indeed an accident, and underneath the baby’s giggles of delight and the three-year-old’s concentrated wiping strokes, my seven-year-old was serious. He was diligently trying to make the disaster disappear before I walked back in the kitchen.

While I did not appreciate the mess, I did appreciate and want to encourage this helpful spirit that I saw. “Beau, what happened?” I asked him.

“Samuel tripped with the green drink, Mom,” he told me. “Don’t worry, we are cleaning it,” he assured me.

“I can see that, sweetie. Thank you,” I said, and went back to my older children in the den to finish my conversation with them.