You don't have to teach kids to misbehave

Our old pastor used to say that you didn't have to teach kids how to misbehave, but you had to teach them how to behave. His point was that we are born with a sin problem. Today there was some more evidence to support this statement. It was about 5:45PM. I was putting away dishes and getting dinner ready. Matthew was playing on the floor by the dishwasher (or where ever else he rolled or scooted to in the kitchen) and Sam was playing in the pantry. He likes to close the door to the pantry and search out interesting items on the shelves.

After a few minutes Sam abruptly left the pantry. Usually his evacuation of the pantry is a result of my cajoling, redirecting or distracting. He doesn't usually leave on his own without good reason. I didn't think too much of it as I hadn't heard any loud crashing or anything of that sort. I continued putting away the dishes. Moments later Sam rolled into the kitchen riding his digger/dozer. There was some crunching noise as he rolled by the pantry--well, he was probably 3 feet from the pantry. I wondered where some sand or rocks came from that he was apparently rolling over and worried about scratching the floor. I immediately had him stop and get off the dozer so I could examine it and the surrounding floor. I knelt down and looked closely at the floor to see it was sprinkled with green decorating sugar. I followed the trail to the pantry and saw, shall we say, a large pile of it in the pantry next to an almost empty bottle of decorating sugar which used to be almost full. I asked Sam what happened and he fessed up that he spilled the sugar. And apparently he knew it was not a good thing to do since he had ran away and not told me what happened. This was probably the first incident of spilling that I did not see him commit and how did he respond? He ran away. Typical human nature. Hope no one will notice. Hope the blame is pinned on someone else.

I told Sam to stand back so I could clean it up. I felt Sam knew what had happened was wrong, but I also knew it was the result of an accident, so I didn't engage in any disciplinary action. I just put the decorating sugars up higher in the pantry. Anyway, I swept up the sugar from the kitchen floor, then I went to get the hand vacuum and started vacuuming. Sam, bless his little heart, finished up with putting the dishes away (at least the ones he could reach). I didn't ask him to, he just did it.

The pictures are of what we got from Santa this year. Matthew rolled right up next to the trunk of the tree and started pulling on the string of lights, so I pulled him out and then took his picture. Safety first, Kodak moments second. What a great present!