Thinkin' Hard

Our little Sunny has been thinking hard lately.

It's my fault. After finding small toys in her mouth four times in two days, I went a little hard core on the "talking to". We were both in tears by the time I was done, and, though I felt a little guilty at the time, I'm thinking it was for the best in the long run.

We talked about choking, not breathing, death, visiting her grave at a cemetery....Like I said, I was pretty hard core on it by this time. This toy-in-the-mouth issue's been going on a long time, and I just dissolved over these last episodes.

It's hard to get Sunny to be serious. That's one of the things I love about her. It's also one of the things that makes us have to think so incredibly hard as we're parenting her!

She's a cheery little thing, and when embarrassed or sad or confused or uncertain, she'll often just get cheerier and goofier.

Exhibit A: My Winter Chipmunk
Aaaahhh.....There's our relaxed Sunny.

Anyway, I got confirmation last night that what I had said last week had actually sunk in. You see, we had a sump pump issue. Of course it occurred during the last two hours of Daddy's trip home from El Salvador.

Thankfully, our neighbor was home and is not afraid of water spouts....in basements. Nor is he inexperienced with such occurrences, which also served to our advantage. No one could convince me that it is easy to find neighbors like we have. While Ken was helping disconnect the outside hose from the sump pump, I ran to trip the pump....and was deluged with water spouting at me from said pump. Up the stairs I ran again, this time shouting, "Help, Ken! Help!". With no hesitation, other than to perhaps question the sanity of his own screaming neighbor, he followed me down to the sump pump room and fixed what was wrong (a clamp had blown off allowing water to escape....all.over.the. spare.bedroom.). Then he came over and sucked it all up in a shop-vac. In my defense, I did use our furniture movers to pull a cabinet and a large desk out of the way. Other than that, I was pretty much superfluous in the whole ordeal.

The "but" comes in that we needed to leave the door to the sump pump room open for the floor to dry out. Now, soon after we moved here, I had my Dad install a lock on that door way high up, just barely low enough for me to reach. It scares me to pieces to think of the girls opening that room and drowning in a hole full of water. Sooooo....now the room is hanging open, and we have a five-year-old who can open door to the basement despite (or perhaps with the assistance of!) the child lock on it. In my mind, that necessitated another discussion with the Mice.

I explained that the pump room is open for awhile, that we are not to go in the basement, that if they were to go in the basement, they could fall in the hole and drown. Die. Two sets of huge eyes stared at me. Two heads nodded in understanding.

Two hours later, Miss Mouse wanted to see how the fan was working on drying out the floor.

Sure, I said. We can go down and look.

Sunny went ballistic. "Noooo! You can't go down there (You tan't dough down dair!)! You will die!". Ahem. Apparently my lecturing has been taken to heart.

I felt a little guilty. I don't want to create overly-anxious kids, just ones that are respectful, aware, and alert of possible dangers instead of oblivious to them. We all went together to look at the drying process, and I have my fingers crossed that this bodes well for Sunny's small-toy issues (and peas-in-the-nose propensities, as well, though I don't get quite as worked up about those!). In the meantime, the toys are up, and the basement door is as secure as possible.

Because this is one superior goofball!!!