Sydney and I are in the kitchen, making breakfast and loading the washer, respectively, and the kids are in the living room, jumping on the air mattress. After about a minute of joint fun, Katherine starts laying down the law: “‘thaniel, no jumping on the bed!”
“Katherine, Nathaniel is allowed to jump, too.”
“‘thaniel, no jumping. No, no, no, no.”
Here Sydney interjects to point out that she’s not unaware of my stance, just disagreeing.
“‘thaniel, Katherine said ‘NO’!” [Hmm, so she clearly heard me in those rounds of “Mama said ‘no'” but apparently missed that “Mama” is the source of authority in them]
“NO!” Nathaniel chimes in, jumping around gleefully to the reverberating “Nos.”
At times like these I feel like I’m living in a fun house at an amusement park, but we did eventually get around to breakfast and on with our day.
Erin
Alan Schmierer