Kids have a way of hijacking your plans and smearing mud all over them.

Or spilling milk all over them.

Or puking on them.

(You get the idea.)

Today, at our house, it was mud.

I was in the barn for just a few minutes.  I assumed they were entertaining themselves outside the barn in a relatively clean way.  Then I answered a call on my cell phone and was distracted for a few minutes… and when I finally caught up with the kids there was a party in full swing.

The party involved the neighbor kids and the creek behind the barn.

There was no need to be mad at them, because by this point they were already chin deep.  The mess was already a force of its own.  And you gotta let kids be kids, right?

But you can always get even.  Gotta love a little cold spring water out of the hose for teaching an enduring lesson.

Unfortunately, the cold hose was more a scare tactic than truly useful in washing away the mud.  Nope, getting rid of the mud took stripping down out in the yard, whereupon I handed them each a wash cloth and continually packed out ice-cream-buckets full of warm soapy water as they did their best to scrub themselves.  And then a shower for each of them in the house.  And piles of extra laundry, from the wet towels in the bathroom to the mud-caked clothes that will spend tonight outside.  And boots that will have to be chiseled out of mud caskets.  And hours of my day today invested in cleaning up a mess that definitely wasn’t on my agenda.

Like I said, kids have a way of hijacking your plans and smearing mud all over them.

Sometimes I wonder why.  Why do I ever let them get in so deep when in the end I am always the one to pay the price?

I think.  I think… I think it’s because I think cool moms encourage creativity and making memories.  Does that sound about right?

© Tami Blake