Kids don’t think straight, and they can’t see properly. You’re lucky if you can teach them to hear. Somehow and from somewhere–my parents will think they know where–Inge inherited the carefree ability to:
…be standing on top of the shoes she’s looking for, and still not see them.
…wash the toilet with bits of tissue dipped in the bowl and carefully wrung out, in the mistaken assumption that she’s doing a good, though time-consuming, deed.
…to draw with crayons all over her white sheets, and not look guilty when I come in.
…to think that when someone is sleeping, you can whisper to them, and they can answer you, and it won’t mess up their nap. Related, to think that when an adult in church, on the phone, or during your brother’s nap, makes frantic gestures at you to be quiet, what they mean is to keep talking, but in a whisper.
…to scoot the piano bench on which Lewis is sitting ever closer to the piano until her brother is dangling from it by his heels and fingernails, his shrieks of alarm splitting the air, and never notice anything wrong.
…to climb the stairs during my naptime, with an ingenuous and charming desire to let me know that she had found “Jingle-Pooh” (presently our most coveted toy); and when banished, to stand at the bottom, jingling Jingle-Pooh, as if in proof that she hadn’t made the story up.