Mischeviousness and Questions

Andrew is developing a personality. I'm not sure I like it yet. I liked my nice and quiet boy who could be entertained with a bag of animal crackers. Those days are slipping out of my hands and are being replaced with a rowdy two year old.

Me, and a few women in our church, meet for M.O.M's group (Mother's of Munchkins) at McDonald's every Thursday. We usually spend a few hours talking about what happened the previous night at church with our little ones. We like to see the kids run around and sneak french fries off our trays. We like to eat the rest of our kids' ice cream cone when they aren't looking. And recently, we like to watch our pregnant friend, Angela get hit on by old men!

Andrew has figured out how to get out of the play room. He works on the door until he can get it open, and then he's off. He usually makes a U-turn through the dining area and comes back in through the other door. He did that once yesterday. The second time he escaped, I waited at the door and couldn't find him. So I went into the dining area to find him. I found him tearing down the aisle to the bathrooms. I called out when he got to the doors and he turned, looked at me, smiled, and ran into the boys bathroom. Uuggghh! My first though was, "How am I supposed to get him out of there?!" My second thought was, "Gross, I hope he's not touching anything." I'm realizing that as a mother, I am constantly put in positions where I have to come up with spur of the moment, situational remedies to problems. I think that one day, when I get out into the business world again, I'm going to have more than enough experience with problem solving.

Do I open the door? Do I enlist the help of men that are strangers? Each option is terribly unattractive. It's about then that I see the nice gentlemen that always gets us refills and mints while we watch our kids play. So I solicit him to rescue my boy. Andrew was thankfully right behind the door, and not playing in a nasty urinal. But just to be safe, we went into the ladies bathroom and washed our hands. Twice. Yuck.

On the way home from school today Ben started in with the "Why did God make..." questions. Wednesday night Ben asked, "why did God make Meena?" My answer was that God made Meena because he knew we needed her. God knew Ben would need a Meena like her. I told him that if God hadn't made Meena, then Daddy wouldn't have been born, and in turn, Andrew and Ben wouldn't have been born. He thought that was pretty awesome. Meena's stock rose a little that night.

So today it was "why did God make people?" It was a pretty long conversation about how God likes for us to talk to him, pray to him and worship him, and about how much he loves us and wants us to love him. Ben finally said, "Mom, how do you know all of this?" which leads to the question, "What don't you know, mom?" That was a fun question. I told him I don't know how fast Ginger runs (Meena and Papa's dog). He said, "That's easy, she runs 11 (mph, I guess).What else do you not know?"

"I don't know where Meena was born." He said, "That's easy too, Meena was born 13 years ago. Well, maybe more like 40." I told him that next year Meena will be 61 and he said, "Wow, I didn't know that! That's a long time. What else don't you know?"

"Well, I don't know how many kids you'll have when you grow up," I said, as we were walking into the house. "I know that too! I'm going to have 47!" (that totally made me choke!) "Ben, Mommy and Daddy only had two (for some perspective). That's an awful lot of kids. How are you going to play with them all?" He smiled at me and said, "I'll just get on the floor and wrestle with them and tear them all up!"