Saying Yes to Water

My children - they are a constant bundle of energy, discovery, and amazement.  Today I had one of those reflective moments where I was thinking about how wonderful it is to be a kid who gets to play every day.  A friend of mine wrote a beautiful blog about saying yes to children's impulses or desires.  These moments are times when for no reason other than a tug at your heart strings you say yes to something that may not be clear in the moment but you soon realize how that simple word provided great and simple joy to kids.  We spend so much time telling kids what not to do because of fears/safety/time/etc that saying yes can become a novelty. Yesterday I was able to have one of these "yes" moments.  To explain this "yes" moment, I need to backtrack about twenty three years. 

My boy

My family lives in an area that is considered very hot during the summer months.  We regularly see temperatures in the high 90's and many times it gets well over 100degreesF.  Because of this, and since my sister happened to be born in June, my mother instituted a tradition at our house.  Each year at my sister's birthday, Mom would prepare for the party by filling buckets of water balloons.  On the day of the party, we would engage in water balloon warfare.  Our fights weren't limited to water balloons.  All sorts of water throwing implements were utilized during these battles.  These included slingshots, hoses, pans, pots, water guns, and even the occasional horse trough.  Pretty much the rule was to soak as many people as possible.  Oh, and if the hose was on, it couldn't come in the house - that one was harder to remember.

Very quickly this tradition didn't stop at my sister's birthday parties.  Water fights soon became a common occurrence around our house.  Usually the situation was my mom would ambush us with the hose as we came walking up to the door or similar.  It would then escalate into a full blown battle where someone usually laughed so hard they peed their pants. To be fair, my mother learned this behavior from her mother.  I have a vivid memory of my grandma flooding her own bathroom with the garden hose because she was trying to shoot cold water on my cousin who was taking a hot shower.  I guess you could say its in our blood.

Yesterday, my kids were playing up at Grandma's house.  All of a sudden, the door flies open and my three year old son comes in yelling that he needs his water gun.  He was soon followed by his five year old sister.  I could have said no since I knew one of them would end up bleeding or crying, the wind was blowing really hard and they both are struggling with allergies, etc.  But I remembered all of those water fights growing up and knew my mother was waiting outside.  I turned to my husband and asked if he knew where the water guns were.  I took the kids to the drawer, handed them each a gun and my daughter was nice enough to take an extra for Grandma.  I  gave only one direction.  Shoot Grandma before she shoots you!

My girl